Engineering Library Blog

EndNote and RefWorks are 2 bibliographic citation manager programs which are provided by the University. Audrey Wright, in connection with OIT and the Library has written and taught about the use of these citing services. (From the Princeton University Library homepage, see “Citing Sources” under Research Help.) Here are links to general, starting information about these programs: Getting started with Endnote 8 Using RefWorks at Princeton

INSPEC and Compendex (Engineering Village 2)

1. Do a search, check desired citations, then click on “Download”.

2. Select “RIS, EndNote, ProCite, Reference Manager” on the Download selected records screen then click on “Download”.

3. In the Windows Open screen, navigate to the directory which contains the library where you want to save the records, and double-click on the library file name. The records are now saved in your library.

Engineering Information’s Compendex Database adds 10 millionth record - 06 Aug 2007 Source: Knowledgespeak Newsletter: “Engineering Information (Ei), Inc., a US-based provider of online information to engineering researchers, has announced that the 10 millionth record has been added to the Compendex database and loaded on the Engineering Village discovery platform. Compendex is a bibliographic database covering published engineering literature, which is used by professional engineers, engineering students, researchers and information professionals worldwide.”

“Since its creation in 1969, Compendex has offered broad coverage of significant engineering literature available. The database has expanded its coverage steadily as the volume of published engineering literature has grown. More than 650,000 new records were added to the database in 2006 alone. Records are carefully selected and indexed to ensure a breadth of literature upon which researchers can rely. Compendex now covers over 5,600 serial sources each year, originating from over 55 countries.”

Princeton’s subscription to Compendex (EI Compendex Plus) goes all the way back to 1884.

Click here to read the original press release.

The latest newsletter from IEEE offers — among other news:

1. Toolbar for IEEE, easily downloaded

2. 4 new journals in IEEE Xplore:

   IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems

   IEEE Journal of Selected topics in Signal Processing

   IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine

   IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management

3. IEEE Online Training Seminars — free demonstrations and searching instructions

4. IET Synthetic Biology — new journal from the Institution of Engineering and Technology, offering free downloading of Volume 1 for 2007, at the IET Digital Library.

Bio-Rad is a new subscription database among the Princeton University database offerings. It “represents a powerful combination of reference data, tools, and technologies that will assist faculty, staff, and students in their scholarly research.” It contains 1.3 million spectra and is growing. It is mainly comprised of:

All Bio-Rad Sadtler spectra, 390,000 IR, NMR, Raman, and mass spectra (including UV-Vis and additional NMR in Q4)

All John Wiley & Sons spectra 845,000 IR, NIR, NMR, and mass spectra

All spectra of Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Robien / Universität Wien 117,000 NMR spectra

SpectraBase™ community database A peer-reviewable database of NMR, IR, UV-Vis, Raman, NIR, and mass spectra edited and reviewed by selected members of the community

The American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), a trusted developer of high-quality technical standards for materials, products, systems and services, will provide access to books and manuals through Knovel. Subscribers wanted to be able to utilize Knovel’s great search functionality for ASTM publications. “Knovel has uniquely optimized content, search and interactive tools for specific engineering disciplines. Knovel’s content includes material properties, process and design information, standard procedures, equations, and formulations.”

“The ASTM titles will enhance Knovel’s coverage of materials and testing for the aerospace, petroleum and energy industries, as well as providing design and construction engineers with the technical information they need to selects, test, analyze and use materials.” (Delores Meglio, VP of Content Mangement at Knovel) Source: Frontline Global Marketing Services Ltd (Laura Cox)

Publications of the Headquarters, United States Army Corps of Engineers can be searched and found at this website only. “This collection of publications is the only repository for all official USACE engineering regulations, circulars, manuals and other documents originating from HQUSACE.” Google, or perhaps another search engine, will find them, but you have to know exactly what you are looking for.
Library services and publications of the USACE Engineer Research and Development Center can be found at this link: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers technical and laboratory publications:

The Library has subscriptions to Global Insights and EIU ( Economist Intelligence Unit). These services cover economic issues worldwide, by region, or country. There is data, economic and financial analysis, forecasting and marketing intelligence for various sectors of the economy. Energy is now a segment in each. These databases can be found listed under the “Articles and Databases” . Global Insight is a monolithic heading, whereas EIU, lists various sectors separately. The EIU market sector databases are brand new and are currently listed under “New & Featured Databases”. “The Economist” (London), the highly respected and popular periodical, is also published by EIU. Similar to Global Insight, EIU contains news of critical issues, reports and briefings, and data and market analyses.

Scitopia is a science and technology website created by 15 societies as a free, federated search portal. Three million articles or reports are searchable by author, title or keywords.

The societies involved are: Acoustical Society of America (ASA), American Geophysical Union (AGU), American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), American Institute of Physics (AIP), American Physical Society (APS), American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), American Vacuum Society (AVS), Electrochemical Society (ECS), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Institute of Physics (IOP), Optical Society of America (OSA), Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), & SPIE.

The full text is not searchable, and when you find papers or reports, there are link resolvers to take you directly to the full text if Princeton subscribes. The societies are making it possible to ppurchase the papers directly, but Princeton ID holders may submit requests to our Document Delivery service.

“TechXtra is a free service which can help you find articles, books, the best websites, the latest industry news, job announcements, technical reports, technical data, full text eprints, the latest research, thesis & dissertations, teaching and learning resources and more, in engineering, mathematics and computing.’ Many items are full text. The contents are described specifically in a table found here:

Do read the “about section”. It will not take the place of Library subcription indexes/databases, like Engineering Index, which should be searched first, but it does provide “deep web” searching of collections missed by Google. Where the Library has subscriptions to series, there should be a link. When you can’t find full text access without logging in or paying, do request papers, etc., via Interlibrary Loan or Document Delivery. TechXtra’s search engine is still under development for more refinements, truncation, for example. There is a slight emphasis on the United Kingdom.

GlobalSpec a search engine, information resource, and epublishing company for the engineering, industrial, and technical communities, announced that it has expanded its relationship with the IEEE, a professional association for the advancement of technology. Visitors to the IEEE Xplore website, a digital library providing full text access to quality technical literature in electrical engineering, computer science, and electronics, will now have access to more than one million application notes available on GlobalSpec. Application notes—content created by companies to explain, illustrate, and promote technologies or products—are searchable by keyword, and will be displayed separately from IEEE Xplore search results. This full library of application notes is powered by The Engineering Web, a vertical search engine indexed by GlobalSpec.

Source: EContent Magazine [EContent.Xtra@emediapro.com] Nov. 27th

Recently Knovel has added the content of these titles, among many others: Wiley’s Water Encyclopedia, Elsevier’s Handbook of Water and Wastewater Treatment Technologies, and McGraw-Hill’s Applied Hydrology.

Today, Knovel has announced (via Knowledgespeak Newletter) that they have an agreement with ISA ( global automation standards) to add their books and technical references for automation and control.

Knovel has scheduled a “Knovel Enhancements Walk-through Webinar” for Wednesday March 5th at 1 PM Eastern time and invites you to attend. Previous sessions have run approximately 30 minutes. You can visit http://knovel.ilinc.com/register/cmcmxr to register.

Improvements include:

• Tabbed navigation structure with Basic Search, Browse and Fielded Search modes

• A Fielded Search function that remains persistent throughout the search, making it easier to revise search criteria

• An enhanced Browse function which simplifies drill-downs

• Availability of the Knovel Unit Converter throughout the site

“First Issue of IET Power Electronics Now Available in IEEE Xplore® IET Power Electronics, a new journal from the IET brings together five principal power electronics themes. The journal, now available in IEEE Xplore, focuses on the specific power electronics areas of applications of power semiconductor technology, circuits, devices, techniques and performance management. The inaugural issue of IET Power Electronics highlights concerns in novel power converter topology; isolated zero-voltage transition PWM converters; forced oscillation in LC circuits; and new options for large power and high-quality AC-DC conversion.” Read the first issue

Source: What’s New @ IEEE in Libraries, April 2008

Knovel News

120 new volumes have been added to Knovel. Here are 4 from the category of Electrical and Power and Engineering:

1. Alternatively Fuelled Vehicles
2. Fuel Cells, Engines and Hydrogen - An Exergy Approach
3. Electromagnetic Theory Instantaneous Power Theory
4. Applications to Power Conditioning

One of Knovel’s most popular titles, this 2nd edition of Knovel Critical Tables has been updated and enhanced with over 40 new interactive tables. A total of more than 16,000 new records have been added.

New tables have been introduced in areas including:

Electrical Properties Thermal Expansion Transport and Flow Density and Compressibility Vaporization and Vapor Pressure Reaction, Thermodynamics and Equilibrium

To see the Spring 2008 newsletter and get tips and demos, visit:

http://www.info.knovel.com//knews/KNewsSpring20080502.html

It includes an example of a “fielded” search for the tensile and compressive properties of materials — of which it contains thousands.

Safari 5.8 will have a statistics counter, and “Safari has also enhanced its video content collection. Subscribers will now have access to online videos in Adobe Flash and Windows Media Player as well as QuickTime.”

Princeton University Library has a full subscription to this online e-book service.

Source: EContent magazine, June 16, 2008

“US DoE expands global science gateway - 18 Jun 2008

The US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Scientific and Technical Information has announced that international science portal WorldWideScience.org has expanded its scope to include connections to databases and scientific web sites from over 44 nations.

WorldWideScience.org allows users to question over 200 million science and technology documents not indexed by popular search engines. The portal linked to 12 databases from 10 countries when it debuted in June 2007. The lately expanded service includes 32 national scientific databases and links to portals from 44 countries.

DOE and the British Library along with eight other participating countries first struck an agreement to establish the portal in January 2007. WorldWideScience.org gives science information consumers a single entry point for searching far-reaching science portals in parallel, with only one query, saving time and effort.”

Source: Knowledgespeak Newsletter

“Search solutions provider Deep Web Technologies, US, has launched an updated interface for the Defense Technical Information Center’s new DTIC Online research portal (http://multisearch.dtic.mil). DTIC is part of the US’ Department of Defense (DOD). The interface, known as MultiSearch, offers four defence search channels from a single drop-down menu, allowing users to access a collection of scientific and defence-related resources in one simultaneous search. The search employs the latest version of Deep Web Technologies’ Explorit Research Accelerator, which is seen to provide ‘smart’ clustering, encyclopedia sidebars from Wikipedia, and EurekAlert! science news.”

“DTIC Online was created specifically for the defence community. MultiSearch can be accessed from the pull-down menu by selecting ‘Federal S&T’ or by going directly to (http://multisearch.dtic.mil).The search is free and much of the content is available at no cost. Some content - like that accessed through Scitopia - can be purchased on a pay-per-view basis or accessed by a subscription.”

Energy Statistics Database United Nations Statistics Division - UNSD

The Energy Statistics Database contains comprehensive energy statistics on more than 215 countries, areas and regions on the production, trade and intermediate and final consumption (end-use) for primary and secondary conventional, non-conventional and new and renewable sources of energy. The complete Energy Statistics dataset, covering the period from 1990 on, is available in electronic format.

Explore Energy Statistics Database at UNdata

Energy Statistics Home page Online data

Contact

Discovered via The Scout Report — October 24, 2008, under UN Data

Currently the National Technical Information Service Bibliographic Database includes records on over 2.8 million scientific and technical reports arranged by major subject categories. The NTIS database has now made available RSS Feeds by Subject Category: Follow the RSS Feeds link at ntis.gov to get started. Energy is one of the categories, for example.

The October 2008 issue of the NTIS Technical Reports Newsletter is now available online from http://www.ntis.gov/pdf/ntrnews4.pdf.

Today, Knovel is releasing an upgrade to the tables with new usability enhancements and interactive tools that you’ll want to see for yourself. Check out screenshots here. Note also at this webpage, they advertize lots of online demonstrations, called Quickstart Webinars. They are free.

Princeton University’s link to the Knovel database:

Knovel Engineering and Scientific Online References
Collection of the latest leading technical and engineering reference books.

ACM, “the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society,” recently added a new search technology to its digital library. This new technology allows users to refine search results by keyword, people, publications, or conferences by selecting from links along the left side of the search results. Additionally, users can discover related journals, magazines, interest groups, or meetings by clicking the tabs along the top of search results. To learn more about this new release, you can read the press release or the information page. And for those interested in the database technology itself, you can begin your research about the Endeca Information Access Platform here.

Engineering Village has also made some small changes to their online resources by updating the “Ask an Expert” page to facilitate finding the best expert and increasing the “Expert Search” character limit to 8,000.