Transportation Tools, Tips, and Resources

RITA's National Transportation Library (NTL) is a digital library with a mandate to facilitate and increase the availability of information that supports transportation policy, research, operations, and technology transfer activities.

The NTL offers a variety of tools to help you find these types of information, so why not start out at the NTL home page at http://ntl.bts.gov/ and explore some of the possibilities? Below are just a few of the tools you can find at the NTL:

Frequently Asked Questions: The NTL produces and maintains the US DOT's Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) web page. This web page provides detailed answers to the questions most frequently asked by our customers. These questions and answers are most easily accessed at: www.dot.gov-simply click on the FAQ link you'll see on the US DOT home page.

Transportation Research Information Service (TRIS) Online, a collaborative product of the Transportation Research Board and NTL, is a specialized transportation database that contains over 500,000 records of published transportation research including technical reports, books, conference proceedings and journal articles in the transportation disciplines of planning, finance, design and construction, materials, environmental issues, safety and human factors and operations for the modes of highways, transit, railroads, maritime and aviation. Currently there are almost 24,000 TRIS records with links to electronic copies of the full-text. TRIS Online is available free to the public on our "Information Resources and Tools" web page at http://ntl.bts.gov/tools/index.html#tools

Sources of Information in Transportation (SIT) is a collection of topical bibliographies, each divided into the following sections: basic references, statistical sources, standards, periodicals, conference proceedings, indexing/abstracting databases, dictionaries and glossaries, and electronic resources. Each bibliographic reference is annotated and contains links to additional information or the resource where appropriate. SIT a produce of the Special Libraries Association Transportation Division and is available free to the public on our "Information Resources and Tools" web page at http://ntl.bts.gov/tools/index.html#tools

TranStats is an online database for disseminating intermodal transportation data in a format suitable for analysis. The free public website at http://www. transtats.bts.gov allows users to search for transportation data sets, explore data, and download specific data from tables. It is most useful for Bureau of Transportation Statistics' data on airlines, border crossings, and ferries.

NTL's Integrated Search provides an in-tandem search of the NTL Digital Repository (full-text digital resources and digitized documents) and TRIS Online. The NTL Digital Repository includes statistical, technical, research, and policy documents provided by federal, state, local, tribal, and other government agencies and can be searched full text. The NTL Integrated Search is available free to the public on our "Information Resources and Tools" web page at http://ntl.bts.gov/tools/index.html#tools

Custom Google Search Tools: This Google-powered search engine enables targeted searching of specific websites (e.g., all state DOT websites). Transportation librarians created the custom searches, which are all accessible through the NTL (http://ntl.bts.gov/tools/statedot.html).

The Transportation Research Thesaurus (TRT) is an internationally used set of standard, or controlled, terms for transportation concepts, topics, and methods which, in addition to keywords, are used to search and retrieve information. First created as an NCHRP project, the TRTcan also be used to organize websites and catalog data sets. The TRT is available free to the public on our "Information Resources and Tools" web page at http://ntl.bts.gov/tools/index.html#tools

Transportation Libraries Catalog (TLCat) TLCat is a national union catalog of transportation libraries. Over 36 transportation library collections from key state DOTs, university libraries, and Federal libraries in transportation are included. TLCat is available free to the public on our "Information Resources and Tools" web page at http://ntl.bts.gov/tools/index.html#tools

If, after you have completed your online search, you need further assistance finding information, please contact NTL's reference staff at Ask-A-Librarian (http://ntl.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/ntl.cfg/php/enduser/ask.php) or 1-800-853-1351 for assistance.