If you can see in the trade screen whether or not an empire has tech X available for trade, that information should be available anywhere in the GUI it makes sense to have it.
Civ4 did this right. Really right. Because they understood that some people really do check each turn to see if any tech trades have opened up - with tech brokering enabled, you either keep up or you fall out of the brokering loop.
I challenge the Crusade designers to meet the gold standard set by Civ4: let me see on *one screen* all the potential tech trades I have.
Hell, the gold+ standard would be "let me select whether or not I'll consider tech trades with this empire" on an empire by empire basis so I didn't have to scroll through a bunch of empires I either don't want to advance or don't care about.
Until GalCiv3 meets at least the gold standard, I leave tech brokering disabled and sometimes just turn off tech trading entirely because it is too much of a PITA.
If I were a galactic emperor, you'd better believe my science advisor would have this information in an easy-to-digest format at a moment's notice and not just shrug and say, "I dunno, go talk to the Altarians and see what they have on tap". And if he didn't, I'd make a point of eating him in front of his successor (why no, I never play the Drengin, why do you ask?).