Engineering Library Blog

Princeton University Library doesn’t collect sets of standards per se, with the exception of our subscription to IEEE Xplore, which does include IEEE standards. We do have an older ASTM collection and indexes. The standards we have are listed in the Main Catalog. We will be happy to obtain any standard that we don’t have via individual request through our Interlibrary Loan service. We will borrow or purchase the standard.

A useful index to standards can be found on the homepage for Engineering Village II, http://www.engineeringvillage2.org/controller/servlet/Controller?EISESSION=1_12bf89211097ae0fe6608ses2&CID=quickSearch&database=1 at the lower left: IHS Standards http://global.ihs.com/?RID=EV2

ISI Thomson Scientific owns TechStreet, another useful index to standards: http://www.techstreet.com/

These 2 commercial services sell standards. You may find standards listed at the web pages of the specific organization, for example: ASME or ASTM, etc. You may be able to buy them for less, directly from the society if you want to purchase any yourself.

There is a now a way to generate reports of bibliographic references with annual statistics for the numbers of citing papers called Citation Reports. It is offered through ISI’s Web of Knowledge (Web of Science, or Science Citation Index, to name the original print version). Here are the steps: 1. Open the database from the Library’s Homepage by choosing “Articles and Databases”, then looking under “W” for Web of Science. 2. Make any refinements such as topical segments or years. 3. Click on “General Search” button (at top). 4. Run an author search, or use the new tool “Author Finder” to run a more refined author search. 5. After the results finish appearing, simply click on the Citation Report button (at the right).

Ask a librarian if there are any questions or problems, or write to this blog!

A couple of graduate students in EE came to the Engineering Library today to ask how to find journal impact factors — a method of ranking a journal’s influence based on the number of citations it has received in other papers. It was developed by Eugene Garfield in the 1960’s who also founded the Institute for Scientific Information and Science Citation Index.

Here are the steps for using JCR (Journal Citation Reports): You can link from the “Articles and Databases” button on the Library’s homepage. Under letter “j”, click on JCR Web. The online portion covers from 1999 through 2005 currently. Choose the Sciences — or the Social Sciences. Then you may then [submit] a search for a selected subject area, or choose a specific journal title. If you choose a subject area, you may sort alphabetically by title, or by impact factor, total cites, immediacy index or cited half-life. There are graphs and many tables of bibliometric data available for the specific titles.

You can get graphic analyses from the [Citation Report] button that appears at the right, after you run any general search in Web of Science.

IEEE hosts regularly scheduled online seminars and training events which are free to all users of IEEE online technical information. Current 60 minute courses include ‘Searching with IEEE Xplore’. Free open demonstrations of IEEE products, for existing and potential customers, including tips on how to search in IEEE Xplore. Advance registration is required and space is limited. For more information and schedule, click here. Princeton has a subscription to this scholarly, technical, full text database on electrical engineering, computer science and electronics.

The Librarians at the Engineering Library are also very glad to answer any questions or provide instruction in the use of IEEE Xplore.

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.

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.

The original database providing citation searching, actually began as a printed index: Science Citation Index. Everyone knows that s/he could find additional relevant papers by looking at the references, (the bibliography) at the conclusion of papers, but this academic searching device was developed into an indexing service by Dr. Eugene Garfield, who founded the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) in Philadelphia in the 1960s. He compiled all the bibliographies from all the papers in major journals of all scientific fields. Science Citation Index has become Web of Science — or Web of Knowledge — which also includes the humanities and social sciences. One can choose the “Cited Ref Search”, or run a search and click on the number that follows “Times Cited” for the paper in question.

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