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Welcome to the ENGR 500 guide covering library resources that help you find information in engineering literature. This page will give you the basics to get started. Use the left navigation bar to go to directly to various topics in this guide. at the top of this page will take you to additional content.
Start with these Article Indexes & Databases
Article Indexes & Databases are specialized resources for locating journal articles. They allow you to search for articles by keywords, subjects, authors, and many other parameters.
- Some databases include other types of materials besides journal articles, such as:
- Conference papers or proceedings (meetings)
- Product reviews
- Descriptions of methodologies or protocols
- Information on innovations in or applications of particular processes, systems and devices
- Product Reviews
- Technical Reports
- Dissertations
- There are many different databases each covering a different area, subject matter or type of documents and each will often contain articles in different journals
- Full-text articles are sometimes available, but finding the full-text may require additional steps (See Finding the Full Text in this guide)
- Indexes & databases might also be called abstracts or repositories
New developments and current research are often first presented as conference papers and/or journal articles.
Start your search in these databases:
The following are multi-disciplinary indexes, abstracts or full-text repositories which access this literature. For more focused article databases, see the Subject Pages listed in the box named Articles: Subject Pages.
- Compendex, GEOBASE, and INSPECEach database is a good source for current and past research.
Compendex covers periodical articles and conference papers for all engineering disciplines, from 1969-current. Over 5000 serials are included.
INSPEC primarily covers periodical articles and conference papers (1898-current) but also includes some books, dissertations and reports. Over 4000 serials covering topics in electrical engineering, physics, computers and control are included.
GEOBASE (1980-current) covers journal articles, conference papers, reports and books in geography, geology and ecology. Over 2000 journals are covered. - Google ScholarGoogle Scholar helps researchers find scholarly information on the Internet. Google is working with several publishers to access their databases of publications, plus searching sites known to include scholarly literature. Results include journal articles, theses, books, preprints, technical reports, and other publications.
- ScienceDirect (1997-current)Contains full-text articles from over 1700 journals published by Elsevier. Although the content is multi-disciplinary, the primary focus is science, engineering and medicine. Table of contents information is available for publication years before 1997.
- Web of Science (1900-current)This multi-disciplinary index includes article information from approximately 8,500 journals in sciences, engineering, social sciences, arts and humanities. A key feature of this index is the cited reference search, which searches for the articles that have cited a particular author’s work, or a specific article.
For product and industry news, try:
- Applied Science and Technology Source (1983-current w/abstracts since 1994)Best source for finding product reviews and news related (engineering) information. Indexes articles in 800 English-language periodicals.
Additional Article Databases
To access additional article databases, or to access these through the Library's main article databases page:
- Go to the Library's home page, http://library.boisestate.edu,
- Click the Databases tab,
- Click on the first letter of the article database name (B for BIOSIS) in the grouping under "Databases by Name",
- Click on the article database name.
Working off Campus? (Remote Access)
If you are working from off-campus, log into your my.boisestate.edu account before you start searching. Otherwise, when you try to use library databases, you will be prompted to log in using your BSU username and password.
Other Engineering Subject Guides
Some of the resources the Library has available are useful for all engineering disciplines, while others are more specific to one or another of the subdisciplines. To see the recommended articles databases for a specific engineering specialty, please select from one of the guides below:
Civil Engineering Subject Guide
Computer Science Subject Guide
Electrical and Computer Engineering Subject Guide
Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering Subject Guide
Materials Science and Engineering Subject Guide