Transportation research can be a challenge due to its multidisciplinary nature. The nation’s network of transportation libraries and librarians is quite small compared to those available to the medical and agriculture industries, even though the impact of transportation on the economy is much larger than either one of them. Both medicine and agriculture benefit from large well-funded national libraries, transportation has to rely on its independent network of information professionals, and the relatively new mostly digital National Transportation Library.
The Dorothy Peyton Gray Transportation Research Library and Archive is the only transportation library available in Southern California. It has played an important role in transportation research locally, nationally and internationally as far back as 1895 when it was first created by the Los Angeles Consolidated Railway. It has been open to the public since 1971 and participated in OCLC, the world’s largest library cooperative since 1978. About 40% of the collection is unique: It is not cataloged or held by any other library.
It serves not only Metro staff but also contractors, consultants, students, educators, historians, journalists, transit advocacy organizations, transportation enthusiasts and those studying urban form and mobility from across the country and around the world.
The research library provides interlibrary loans to other libraries, university research centers and government agencies, and catalogs its collection in OCLC WorldCat — the universal bibliographic database.
Metro Research Library and Archive staff belong to LA as Subject, the California Library Association, the Society of California Archivists, the Special Library Association’s Transportation Division, the National Academies Transportation Research Board, Society of American Archivists, and the National Association for Government Archive and Records Administrators.
The library can be accessed by the public on the internet via its Primary Resources website and by Metro staff via its Microsoft Sharepoint intranet site.
The following outline is a suggested approach for transportation research.
Books, reports, studies, dissertations and journal titles in our library
Search approximately 50,000 items in the Metro Research Library & Archive online catalog (https://librarycat.metro.net or https://l92021.eos-intl.net/L92021/OPAC).
Take note of any additional keyword vocabulary contained in the cataloging records. Approximately 20% of the records contain links to on-line full text publications.
After locating books, reports, studies, dissertations and journals, look for bibliographies or sources used in those items for additional research material.
A significant portion of the research collection is contained on microfiche. These reports can be distinguished by Call Numbers beginning with the letters “PB.”
See National Technical Information Service and its National Technical Reports Library below. Depending on the subject, a search of Metro’s Board of Directors website and its archive of pre-2015 materials, including Board meeting minutes from the predecessor agencies back to 1951 (approximately 25,000 items) and internally, Metro Board-approved Policies (90+ major policies) may also yield important information on public policy decisions and their background.
Books, reports, studies, dissertations and journal titles held by other transportation libraries
Search OCLC WorldCat for the holdings of other libraries, including transportation libraries with results in order of the libraries closest to your location.
Articles published in journals, reports, conference proceedings, and digitized reports
Search the National Transportation Library and Transportation Research Board’s integrated Transportation Research Information Database Service (TRID), a bibliographic database for over 1 million abstracts of articles published in journals, conference proceedings, reports, and serial publications.
Note the titles and Transportation Research Thesaurus (TRT) vocabulary terms used to describe your topic. If the search yields a transportation journal, you can search the Metro Library catalog for journal holdings and for specific volumes/dates needed. About 15% of the abstracts have links to full text items available online, some free and some for purchase. Contact the Library if you’d like us to purchase an article. We will also add it to the Library’s research collection.
Studies from the National Academy of Sciences’ Transportation Research Board (TRB)
Search the Transportation Research Board’s online publications for free reports. The series most applicable to Metro is the Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP). After locating reports, look for the bibliography of source material to find additional related resources. Also available via the staff intranet only is access to TRB’s Transportation Research Record (TRR) series of approximately 7,000 peer-reviewed technical reports.
Research in Progress (research that may not yet be published)
Search TRB’s Research In Progress database provides access to research projects not yet published. Search here for research announcements, scope and contact information of researchers. It is a rich resource for finding out who is currently in the process of performing research and/or projects not yet funded.
Other full text reports
Search the National Technical Reports Library (NTRL) online catalog. Beginning in 1996, reports have been digitized and can be downloaded, but the NTRL catalog has reports dating back many years earlier.
If you need anything prior to 1996 and Metro Library doesn’t have it in its collection, you may contact the NTIS Customer Service Center. They digitize reports as requested for older materials. Metro Library subscribed to NTIS transportation reports on microfiche (in order to save shelf space) from 1971 until approximately 2004 when they became available online. There is a microfiche digitization/printing station in the library for this collection of approximately 20,000 reports. Metro Library pays for employee/internal only access to this database.
Transportation Data
Search the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Their mission is data collection, analysis, and reporting and to ensure the most cost-effective use of transportation-monitoring resources. For transit agency level data, the National Transit Database (NTD) collects information from across all transit agencies and publishes it online as data sets. For easier access to NTD data, the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) re-publishes extracts on its statistics page.
Transportation studies, theses, dissertations, academic research
Search the University Transportation Centers‘ (UTC) websites. The United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) selects new host campuses by various subject areas every six years.
Notable ongoing programs include the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, the San José State University’s Mineta Transportation Institute, the University of California, Berkeley Harmer E. Davis Transportation Library, the University of South Florida’s Urban Transportation Research Center, and the Northwestern University Transportation Library. Locally, both the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies and the USC / CSULB Metrans Consortium are or have been participants in the UTC program.
Guidelines, policies, standards, conference presentations
Search the websites of professional industry associations such as the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), the American Planning Association (APA), and the European Union’s International Association of Public Transport (UITP)