Internet Resources Newsletter

Culled directly from the Internet Resources Newsletter, here is the latest engineering-related internet news.  As ever, do take a look at the newsletter itself which is always packed with links to both useful and intriguing sites. 

Building Sustainable Design (UBM Built Environment’s latest brand) is a new monthly magazine for building services engineers, architects, clients and all construction professionals who care about sustainable, low energy design in the built environment.

EngineeringDaily.net is a news/articles/discussions magazine by and for in-the-trenches practitioners.

Anyone interested in RSS feeds may like to view the following:

Royal Academy of Engineering News Releases
http://www.raeng.org.uk/feeds/rssnews.aspx

Web snippets

 

Extracted from the May edition of the Internet Resources Newsletter, just  three items to tempt you with this time. Once you’ve looked at these, do try the newsletter itself – there’s usually something for everyone!

Journal of Applied Science & Engineering Technology

The Journal of Applied Science & Engineering Technology (JASET) is an open access, peer reviewed, double blind, journal for the dissemination of applied technical scholarship.

Project Leadership: Building and Improving Teams 09

The Barbican, London, 19th May.

“Increasingly the project management community is debating the role of leadership within projects, having realised that the plethora of systems, processes, procedures and IT software created in the past couple of decades is still not guaranteeing a successful project outcome. Is project leadership the key skill that has been missing our attention?”

SearchPetroleum.net

SearchPetroleum.net (SP.net ) is a search engine created specifically for the petroleum industry. It displays the most relevant and highest quality petroleum websites.

News from the Web

 

 

Direct from the Internet Resources Newsletter here are the latest extracted engineering-related snippets. When you’ve looked at these, try clicking on the link to the newsletter itself - it’s always packed with interesting website news.

AccessEngineering

http://www.accessengineeringlibrary.com/

AccessEngineering is a redesign of the premiere online engineering resource, formerly known as McGraw-Hill’s Digital Engineering Library.

ENER-Plast

http://www.enerplast.eu/

ENER-Plast is a European Community funded project, supported by the Intelligent Energy Europe programme.

The objective of ENER-Plast is to provide the European polymer and its associated industries with the information, resources and tools needed to reduce their carbon footprint and environmental impact.

Engineering History and Heritage

http://www.engineeringhistoryandheritage.com/

A new journal, Engineering History and Heritage provides an indispensible historical perspective on existing structures and infrastructure around the world.

International Journal of Social Robotics

http://www.springerlink.com/content/1875-4791

A new journal from Springer.

This journal is a periodic publication which consolidates high impact contributions from researchers and developers in the field of social robotics, offering readers a holistic view of this emerging industry.

ticTOCs – a new way to keep up to date

ticTOCs logo

ticTOCs is a new scholarly Journal Table of Contents (TOCs) service which helps you keep up to date with what is being published in 12,000 journals from 430 publishers. You can carry out a keyword search to discover the table of contents matching your research and you can quickly load the relevant references you find into RefWorks. You can retrieve the full text where we have a subscription and you can also import RSS feeds into your favourite feed reader such as Google Reader or BlogLines. Access is from www.tictocs.ac.uk.  It is a free service but registering enables you to store your newsfeeds.

New resources for engineers – presentation available

 Those of you who were unable to attend the recent training sessions held by the Library Engineering team on 20th and 22nd January can find a copy of the Powerpoint presentation here. The sessions covered a number of new databases including 

• SAE Digital Library
• IEEE Xplore
• SPIE Digital Library
• Construction Information Service (CIS)
• Standards – British Standards and ASTM

To access the Powerpoint presentation click here – New resources for Engineers

Internet resources for engineers

Here are the latest engineering-related extracts from the Internet Resources Newsletter.  When you’ve looked at these, why not take a look at the newsletter itself – it’s full of diverse and fascinating sites. Guaranteed, you’ll find something worth clicking on!

International Journal of Advanced Mechatronic Systems: IJAMechS

http://www.inderscience.com/ijamechs

 

A new journal from Inderscience. The intention of IJAMechS is to provide an international forum to report current development from interdisciplinary theoretical studies, computational algorithm development, and applications of mechatronic systems. It particularly welcomes those emerging methodologies and techniques which bridge theoretical studies and applications in all mechatronic systems. Novel quantitative engineering and science studies may also be considered.

 

Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy: JRSE

 

http://jrse.aip.org/

 

 The first issue of this journal is now available. JRSE is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal covering all areas of renewable and sustainable energy-related fields that apply to the physical science and engineering communities. As an electronic-only, Web-based journal with rapid publication time, JRSE is responsive to the many new developments expected in this field. The interdisciplinary approach of the publication ensures that the editors draw from researchers worldwide in a diverse range of fields.

 

SEB’09 – International Conference on Sustainability in Energy and Buildings

 

 

http://seb09.sustainedenergy.org/

 

 Holiday Inn Brighton Seafront, United Kingdom, 29th & 30th April and 1st May 2009. Hosted by the University of Brighton, UK, and organised by the KES International research and knowledge transfer organisation, SEB’09 will be a major opportunity for researchers in subjects related to sustainability, renewable energy technology, and applications in the built environment to report on recent research and mix with stakeholders in the field.

 

 

The Construction Index

http://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/

 

 

“Use The Construction Index as you would any other major Search Engine. For a list of our national results, type e.g. “Construction Training”. If you are looking for something in a particular town, type it into the search bar. e.g. “Construction Training Peterborough”.”

Searching for a patent?

 

Photograph by Sam Teigen, taken from www.flickr.com

Are you aware of PatBase, a recent addition to the Library’s database collection?  If you’re searching for a patent this is an excellent place to start.

PatBase is an extensive and welcome addition to the Library’s growing collection of searchable patent resources. In excess of 75 countries are included with full-text availability on over 20 million documents.  The EP, PCT, US, GB, FR and DE patent-issuing authorities are all covered and it contains over 30 million consolidated patent families.

Access to PatBase  is via MetaLib from either the Patents subject category or the Find Database link. You will need to login with the username and password specified on the Library’s Electronic journal and information services passwords web page.

There is also a very useful online guide to get you started – https://www.patbase.com/quickguide.pdf.  Alternatively, why not book yourself onto the Library’s Database of the Month course on Wed. 18th March? This session focusses specifically on PatBase. For further information and to book your place: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/library/skills/dbaseofmonth.html.

Questions or comments about PatBase? Please use the box below or contact your Academic Librarian directly: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/library/about/StaffList.html

Literature reviews: are students clued up?

Photograph by ntr23. www.flickr.com

Final year Civil & Building students have recently taken the opportunity to share their views on the literature review process.  As part of the Centre for Education for the Built Environment (CEBE) funded research project, “NEW Review”, final year students were asked for their feedback on a whole range of issues, from how important they felt the literature review was, how many sources they expected to search and read, and how confident they felt using the wide range of resources and services provided by the Library.

Of the 54 respondents, a pleasing 90% felt that the literature review was either very important or important compared with the rest of the dissertation.  In fact most expected to search over 15 resources, read at least 11-20 sources and to continue their search over the lifetime of the project.  However, there was a disconcerting lack of confidence about some the Library’s key resources.  For example, 25% of students were not confident about what Metalib was,  40% were not confident about using it, 33% lacked confidence about what databases the Library has, and 50% lacked confidence about using SFX  to locate full-text.  60% lacked confidence in using Refworks. 

Students ranked well in other areas though.  Over three-quarters felt they could recognise the bias and authority of a source.  Over 80% felt they understood how to cite.  Almost all students felt they understood plagiarism.

 

This data will help the project develop a new approach to teaching the literature review.  Experimental work is currently underway to capture students’ information seeking activities online which will further assist the project’s aim.

 

For more information on the work of the project, please contact Prof Andrew Baldwin, Dept of Civil & Building, A.N.Baldwin@lboro.ac.uk or use the comment box below.

Database trials – Avery Index to Architectural Publications

Photo by Haags Uitburo from www.flickr.com - published under Creative Commons license

 

The Library has organised two trials of the Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals database via each of the two platforms on which it is available – CSA and OCLC. How to access each trial is detailed below. We welcome feedback – good or bad – on these trials, please contact Steve Corn,
S.C.Corn@lboro.ac.uk with your comments.

The Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals database offers a comprehensive listing of journal articles on architecture and design, including bibliographic descriptions on subjects such as the history and practice of architecture, landscape architecture, city planning, historic preservation, and interior design and decoration. It contains more than 440,000 thousand entries surveying over seven hundred American and international journals. These include not only scholarly and popular periodical literature, but also publications of professional associations, American state and regional periodicals, and the major serials on architecture and design of Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Australia. Articles are included from key publications such as American Architect, Baumeister, Byggekunst, Domus, and El Croquis, as well as architectural articles from art and planning journals such as American Art Journal, Burlington Magazine, Environment and Planning A, Metropolitan Museum Journal, and Revue de l’Art. Coverage is 1934 – current, (with selective coverage back to 1741).

Via the CSA platform until 15th November 2008

To access the trial from on campus please click here

or from off campus please click here

and login with your Athens username and password.

Via the OCLC platform until 16th November 2008

To access the trial from on campus please click here

or from off campus please click here

and login with your Athens username and password.

Keeping up-to-date with Occupational Health & Safety

OSH Update is a web-based database containing an ever-growing collection of (currently) 17 databases from worldwide authoritative sources of Occupational Health and Safety information.

This aggregation of databases currently contains well over 800,000 relevant references with abstracts or keywords and will keep you alerted to hot topics such as the health risks of nanotechnology, corporate killing and corporate social responsibility, bioterrorism, management of road risks, preparedness and business continuity as well as basic health, safety, hygiene and working environment information.

There are many thousands of references that immediately link to full text documents. When you start to search you will, by default, be searching all of the 17 databases.

Check out http://www.oshupdate.com/.  You will need a username and password to access OSH Update.

Any comments – use the box below!