Engineering Research Guide

This is a general research guide for the undergraduate and graduate courses in OSU's Engineering programs. You'll find suggestions for locating books, articles, topical overviews, research tools, and factual information. If further assistance is needed, please contact Margaret Mellinger, 737-9642, Margaret.Mellinger@oregonstate.edu

Finding Books in Online Catalogs

OSU Libraries online catalog is where you can search for books, journal titles and conference proceedings owned by OSU Libraries. You can search for topics related to engineering using keywords or broader subject headings such as:

Engineering design	Technology
Ocean engineering	Fluid dynamics
Power resources	Hydraulics

Major Library of Congress classification headings and call numbers used in engineering:

Q	Science	TC	Hydraulic engineering
Q180	Operations research	TD	Environmental engineering
Q300-390	Artificial intelligence	TE	Highway engineering
QA	Mathematics	TF	Railroad engineering & operations
QA75-76	Computer Science	TG	Bridge engineering
QA801-939	Analytical mechanics. Fluid mechanics	TH	Building construction
QC	Physics	TJ	Mechanical Engineering & Machinery
QD	Chemistry	TJ163	Power Resources
QE	Geology	TJ210.2-225	Robotics
R	Medicine	TK	Electrical engineering. Electronics. Nuclear engineering.
R856-857	Biomechanical engineering	TK5101-6720	Telecommunications
T	Technology	TK7800-8360	Electronics
T55.4-60.8	Industrial engineering	TK9001-9401	Nuclear Engineering
T385	Computer graphics	TL	Motor vehicles. Aeronautics. Astronautics
TA	Engineering (general). Civil engineering	TN	Mining engineering. Metallurgy
TA349-359	Mechanics of engineering	TP	Chemical technology
TA401-492	Materials of engineering & construction	TS	Manufacturing
TA630-820	Structural engineering. Geotechnical engineering	VM	Naval architecture. Marine engineering

If you do not find what you are looking for in the OSU Libraries collection, here are some other catalogs to try:

Summit (Orbis): the union catalog of the 33 libraries of the Orbis/Cascade Alliance. Items available through Summit can be requested and delivered to OSU within a week.

WorldCat: a comprehensive database of books, proceedings, symposia, monographs and journal holdings of libraries worldwide.

Authorized OSU faculty, staff and students may order books and articles not found at OSU Libraries through Interlibrary Loan Services.

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Theses & Dissertations

Finding theses and dissertations owned by OSU Libraries:

Go to the OSU Libraries Online Catalog
Click on Keyword search
From the drop-down menu at Material Type: choose MSS & THESES
Type a keyword (author's last name; part of title, topic) and click on search

Another strategy is to search by call number. In the Valley Library, all theses and dissertations have the call number: LD4330. XXXX. X...where XXXX is the year the thesis was accepted, and X is the initial letter of the author's last name. If it is a dissertation, it will be designated by a D after the year. example: LD4330.2002D. G62

You can also use a keyword search. For example: "theses and engineering"

To identify theses or dissertations not owned by OSU Libraries try:

Dissertation Abstracts, a database of dissertations from institutions worldwide.
Masters Theses in the Pure and Applied Sciences 1955-. Print index at: Q1 .M461 An annual index listing masters theses from about 225 cooperating institutions in the United States and Canada. Citations are arranged under 44 discipline headings (aerospace engineering, agricultural economics...etc.), with an alphabetical arrangement by institution within each discipline.

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Proceedings

Search for proceedings in OSU Libraries online catalog:

Because of title variations, it can be difficult to search titles of proceedings in the online catalog. Feel free to ask for assistance at the reference desk.

Information that helps in searching for proceedings: name (and abbreviation) of sponsoring organization; name of conference series; title of conference in a particular year; location and date of conference. Keep in mind that proceedings are often published in the years following the conference, so publication year may not match the date of the conference.

Strategies for searching proceedings in the OSU Libraries online catalog:

Do an author search for the organization name or abbreviation

Use a keyword search and choose some of the more important words in the conference title, the organization, or title of the conference.

Example: "proceedings" AND [keyword] AND [keyword]. . ."
The search "proceedings AND robotics and IEEE" yields 19 results, including: Proceedings / IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

To identify conference proceedings not found in OSU Libraries online catalog, try the following tools:

ProceedingsFirst: a database of conference proceedings holdings of libraries worldwide.
Index to Scientific and Technical Proceedings. Q 1 .T56. Verify articles or conference papers within proceedings by sponsoring organization, subject of conference, or location of meeting. Use the index in the suspected year of publication or its subsequent year.

Finding Articles in Journals

OSU Libraries license many databases that are used to search for articles in journals. Some of the database searches provide bibliographic (title, author, source, year, volume, number, pages) information; others link to full-text articles.

Here are some OSU Libraries databases to choose when doing a literature search in Engineering:

General Engineering	Applied Science & Technology Index; Compendex; INSPEC; NTIS; Web of Science
Bioresource Engineering	ESPM (Environmental Sciences & Pollution Management );Web of Science; Agricola; Biological Abstracts; CAB Abstracts
Chemical Engineering	SciFinder Scholar; Compendex; Web of Science
Civil Engineering	Compendex; Applied Science & Technology Index; Web of Science
Computer Science	ACM Digital Library; IEEE/IEE Electronic Library; Compendex; INSPEC; Web of Science
Electrical Engineering	IEEE/IEE Electronic Library; Compendex; INSPEC; Web of Science
Engineering Business	Business Source Premier; Web of Science
Environmental Engineering	ESPM (Environmental Sciences & Pollution Management )
Industrial Engineering	Compendex; Web of Science
Mechanical Engineering	Compendex; Web of Science
Nuclear Engineering	International Nuclear Information System; Energy Citations; Compendex; INSPEC; Web of Science
Transportation Engineering	TRIS online; TRB Research in Progress

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Electronic Journals

OSU Libraries provide subscription access to many e-journals. Most titles are included in the OSU Libraries Online Catalog, or can be accessed from the Electronic Journals page on the library website. Some vendor packages such as the newspapers and journals in the Lexis-Nexis database, are not included in OSU Libraries Online Catalog or the e-journals list. If you have questions about e-journals, please contact Laurel Kristick.

OSU Libraries online journals related to engineering
These must be searched one journal title at a time, so this is not a very efficient way to search.

Unless you are interested in searching one specific electronic journal, it is recommended that you use a periodical index/database to do your searching. One advantage of electronic journals is that they are full-text online. This list is subject to change, and years of coverage will vary by journal.

The Engineering E-journal Search Engine (EESE): http://www.eevl.ac.uk/eese/ is an index to over 70 engineering e-journals. Each e-journal included in the index has been selected from approximately 300 e-journals in the EEVL database (see below under Internet Sources) because of its free availability in full-text.

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Current Awareness Services & Document Delivery Services

ArticleFirst: View the table of contents of currently published periodicals.

ingenta: ingenta is a database of recent articles from many thousands of journals. ingenta provides 24-48 hour fax delivery of articles from journals for which ingenta has copyright permission. ingenta Reveal Research Alerts is an automated alerting service that delivers the tables-of-contents of journals via e-mail. Authorized OSU users can register for an ingenta account through the OSU Libraries ingenta gateway

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Reference Sources

Encyclopedias & Handbooks

General

CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. Valley Reference QD65 .C5

Encyclopedia of materials science and engineering. Valley Reference TA402 .E53

Encyclopedia of physical science and technology. Valley Reference Q123. D673

Handbook of engineering fundamentals. Valley Reference TA151 .E8

Handbook of mathematical, scientific, and engineering formulas, tables, functions, graphs, transforms. Valley Reference QA40 .H3571

McGraw-Hill encyclopedia of science & technology. Valley Reference Q121 .M3

McGraw-Hill handbook of essential engineering information and data.
Valley Reference TA151 .M34

Standard handbook of engineering calculations. Valley Reference TA332 .S73

Specialized

To search for reference sources in specific engineering fields:

Go to the OSU Libraries Online Catalog
Using "keyword search", enter the format and topic keywords
Examples: encyclopedia and electrical, handbook and civil

Another strategy is to use the call number ranges to browse the reference collection on the main floor of The Valley Library

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Internet Sources

Compiled Lists of Engineering resources

EEVL: the Internet guide to Engineering, Mathematics, and Computing.

Efunda: Engineering Reference Sources. The main categories of information are currently divided into 'Materials,' 'Processes,' 'Formulas,' 'Design Center,' 'Units & Constants,' and 'Mathematics.'

EngNet: a . . ."Directory/Search Engine/Buyers Guide Service aimed specifically at the Engineering Industry to enable Engineers, Technicians, Tradesmen, etc. to find information and communicate effectively with suppliers in the Engineering Industry." Free searching, also fee-based content.

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NTIS Documents

OSU Libraries own most of the reports distributed by the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) since 1963. Please see the NTIS Documents guide for more information.

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Technical Reports

Technical reports are written to convey the progress or results of scientific or technical research to the sponsoring agency, institution or corporate body. Because they are not widely disseminated or indexed, they can be difficult to locate. See the guide to Technical Reports.

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Patents

Searching for US Patents

United States Patent and Trademark Office: http://www.uspto.gov/ 1790 - present. Free searching and access to full-text patent images.

Delphion Research: http://www.delphion.com Offers basic searching and retrieval of patents for free; more powerful searching and downloading capabilities are available for a fee.

SciFinder Scholar: An alternative means of searching for patents related to chemistry or chemical engineering. Links out to free sources of patents, as well as to fee-based sources of full-text patent

Further information on searching the US Patent Full-Text Database

Searching for international patents:

Canadian Patents Database: http://patents1.ic.gc.ca/intro-e.html

Delphion Research: http://www.delphion.com

European Patent Office: http://ep.espacenet.com/ contains information from patent applications published in over 50 countries (and regions) worldwide. Over 30 million records. Has a search feature that allows you to search the English abstracts of Japanese patent publications by Japanese applicants.

Japanese Patent Office: http://www.jpo.go.jp/
Search Industrial Property Digital Library

Rospatent: http://www.fips.ru/ensite/
Search Russian patents (in Russian)

Obtaining copies of patents

U. S. Patents can be downloaded or printed from the U. S. Patent Full-Text Database. For more information on printing, consult How to Print Patent Full-Page Images.

Order paper copies of U. S. patents from the Patent and Trademark Copy Sales Office for $3 per utility/design patent or $15 per plant patent. See their order page for more information.

Patents can also be ordered from the Paul L.Boley Law Library at Lewis and Clark at (503) 768-6786, which is our regional patent depository. There is currently a fee of $7.00 per patent (plus postage).

If international patents are needed quickly, a librarian may be able to do a mediated search for you. Contact the engineering librarians at ISPSSubjectLibrarians@orst.edu or 737-9642

Use a fee-based service such as Delphion or Micropatent

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Standards

List of OSU owned Standards This list of OSU-owned standards at: http://osulibrary.orst.edu/research/srg/sie.html also contains web locations to sponsoring organizations websites.

ANSI Standards TA 368 .A48 The American National Standards Institute, approves standards issued by sponsoring organizations such as IEEE, the Institute of Electrical Engineers; SAE, Society of Automotive Engineers and the ISO, International Standards Organization . The resulting standards are thus nationally approved and given designations like ANSI/IEEE 82.9.

American Standards for Testing Materials (ASTM specifications) TA 401 .A46 Specifications for the approved testing procedures in material science, chemical engineering, engineering geology and many other areas of engineering and applied science.

NSSN : A National Resource for Global Standards: http://www.nssn.org/ NSSN BASIC is a free online information service providing access to bibliographic information for more than 225,000 approved standards. Search NSSN for title words or document numbers to find out if the standard you need exists, and if so, where to find it. Valley library does not own the majority of these standards, however they can be ordered through this website.

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Grants and Research Funding

IRIS (Illinois Researcher Information Service): IRIS currently contains over 8,000 active federal and private funding opportunities in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. Users can search IRIS by sponsor, deadline date, keyword, and other criteria. Most IRIS records contain live links to sponsor Web sites, electronic forms, or Electronic Research Administration (ERA) portals.

OSU Research Office: resources for faculty, students and industry.

Community of Science: sign up for a free account, create a profile to be sent e-mail alerts of new funding opportunities.

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Return to the Alphabetical or Subject index of the Subject Research Guides

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