Librarian Resources

Where to Start
Indexes, Search Engines and Tools
Google Co-op Custom Search Engines
Professional Organizations & Transportation Knowledge Networks
Transportation Collections

Where to Start

Transportation Librarian's Toolkit, a product of the pooled fund study, offers comprehensive guidance to librarians who are serving customers in state departments of transportation.

WisDOT’s online guide to transportation resources provides links to major transportation research organizations, full-text research reports, and resources by state and topic.

Mn/DOT’s comprehensive collection of articles and reports on transportation information management is an invaluable resource for transportation librarians. The seminal studies in the field are all here.

US DOT’s National Transportation Library offers research tools, statistics, dictionaries, information management standards, directories and legislative resources. NTL is actively involved in establishing and sustaining regional Transportation Knowledge Networks composed of state DOT libraries and others.

Indexes, Search Engines and Tools

TRIS Online is a public-domain, Web-based version of the Transportation Research Information Services bibliographic database. A collaborative effort by the NTL and TRB, the database contains more than half a million records of published transportation research.

RiP, TRB’s Research in Progress database, contains more than 9,500 current or recently completed transportation research projects. Most of the RiP records are projects funded by federal and state DOTs. University transportation research is also included.

TLCat, the Transportation Library group catalog and a subset of the OCLC WorldCat, currently contains the holdings of 36 transportation libraries. Non-members can search the catalog though the guest view.

RNS, TRB’s Research Needs Statements database, provides a central location for searching and sharing research needs statements and is updated continuously by TRB’s standing committees.

Sources of Information in Transportation is compiled by members of the Transportation Division, Special Libraries Association, and published by the National Transportation Library.

DOAJ, the Directory of Open Access Journals, covers free, full-text, quality-controlled scientific and scholarly journals. Titles in interdisciplinary areas, such as materials and engineering, make this a resource worth consulting.

TRT, the Transportation Research Thesaurus, is a tool developed by TRB to improve the indexing and retrieval of transportation information and covers all modes and aspects of transportation.

Google Co-op Custom Search Engines

Individual States
Search transportation sites in individual states. An excellent example is the Wisconsin Transportation Information Search. WTIS includes more than 50 transportation sites in Wisconsin, including the DOT site, university sites in Wisconsin, MPO and RPC sites, and nonprofit Wisconsin transportation sites.

LTAP and TTAP Centers
Search all 58 LTAP and TTAP Center Web sites.

Metropolitan Planning Organizations
Search the Web sites of metropolitan planning organizations. Sites included in this search were taken from the AMPO membership list.

Public Transit Search
Meta search all major transit agency and transit-related organization Web sites for fares, routes, data, reports, research, press releases, budgets, policies, programs and other transit industry information.

State DOTs
Search the DOT Web sites of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The search engine has received more than 100,000 queries since December 2006.

U.S. State Public Utilities Commissions
Search the Web sites of public utilities commissions in all 50 states, plus the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissions.

UTCs
Search for transportation research located on university transportation center Web sites, including the U.S. DOT Research & Innovative Technology Administration’s University Transportation Center program and the Council of University Transportation Centers.

Professional Organizations & Transportation Knowledge Networks

SLA Transportation Division
More than 200 librarians from universities, corporations, and government organizations make up the Special Libraries Association Transportation Division, international in scope and interests.

Transportation Librarians Roundtable
The National Transportation Library hosts monthly Web conferences with featured speakers from the transportation library and information community.

Midwest Transportation Knowledge Network
MTKN was founded in 2001 as a network of state DOT and academic transportation libraries in the Midwest. Sponsored by NTL, the network is a forum to pool resources and share expertise and best practices while serving as a model for a national TKN.
Colabwiki page

Western Transportation Knowledge Network
The Western Transportation Knowledge Network is currently under development. Membership is open to any transportation library or entity interested in transportation information in the Western states.

Eastern Transportation Knowledge Network
The Eastern Transportation Knowledge Network is a newly forming network that will be open to all interested transportation libraries or organizations interested in transportation information in the Eastern states.

Transportation Collections

State DOTs
Courtesy of Mn/DOT Library, this list provides links to state DOT libraries and their catalogs, where available.

Northwestern University Transportation Library is one of the largest transportation information centers in the world with over 450,000 items in its collection.
Web site
Catalog

Harmer E. Davis Transportation Library, University of California, Berkeley Institute of Transportation Studies has one of the finest transportation collections in the U.S. Established in 1948, it is the country's oldest university transportation library.
Web site
Catalog