The aim of these pages is to alert you to the kinds of
information sources that may be useful for aspects of your topic. There
may be no definitive answer to your topic. The information you decide
you need will come out of the ideas you have discussed to solve the
problem presented.
If your ideas have moved beyond the basic sources listed below
and for your topic, please contact me, Kay
Leverett, the Engineering
Librarian, and I can suggest other sources of information.
Handbooks and encyclopaedias are often useful
sources when you are trying to gain familiarity with a topic. They will
not cover all aspects of your topic but they can give you ideas about
its scope and principles. Most are in the Reference Collection, on
Level 3 south of the
Library. These are written at a graduate level.
Covering many aspects of engineering are:
McGraw-Hill
encyclopedia of science and technology.
9th
ed. 2002.
Reference
collection 503 M14.8
Engineering
handbook. 1996.
Reference collection
620
D695e
Kempe's
engineers year-book. 96th ed. 1991.
Reference collection
620 K32
In addition you may find information through -
For all topics, try the wide
ranging mechanical, civil or electrical engineering handbooks on these
lists, since they may include sections relevant to your topic.
Journal
articles, conference papers and reports will all be listed in
specialised indexes or databases. Remember that in most of these
databases you can use search techniques such
as Boolean operators,
truncation etc. to create your search strategy. If you need some ideas
for searching databases, click here.
Choose databases appropriate for the topic you are
searching.
Engineering and interdisciplinary databases can
be used for several of the EP&D topics:
Databases with an international coverage of technical issues include
There are a number of databases covering a wide range of topics,
including social impact and environmental issues, which may
provide comment and ideas. Links to the full text of
many articles are provided.
For access to newspaper articles and letters, see
Australia/New
Zealand reference centre
elibrary
Both of these sources include many national
and regional newspapers. Also cover a number of
journals in the social sciences and some technical journals.
Factiva
is the major source for the full text of newspapers world wide.
Additional databases may be useful for aspects of a topic, eg.
If you are considering an Australian perspective there are a number of
databases covering
aspects of your topics, eg.
Can I find this article/paper/report in Adelaide?
Use search
engines such as Google and gateways to find web sites.
Gateways aiming to guide you to
high quality Internet
resources in engineering include:
AVEL: Australasian Virtual
Engineering Library
EEVL: Internet guide to
Engineering, Mathematics and Computing
BUBL:
Engineering and
technology
Scirus
search engine
For South Australian interests see:
South Australia Central
with links to information from South Australian government and
organization sites such
as
S.A.
local
government web sites
Online
Water Resources, S.A. Department of Land, Water and Biodiversity
Conservation.
PIRSA, Department of
Primary
Industries &
Resources, South Australia
Transport
SA
Some specialised Australian sites exist freely, such as:
Bureau of
Meteorology Hydrological Services Program
CSIRO Online There are
a number of ways of finding information: use the Search all CSIRO bar;
under Features look at the links from the Research
Divisions; or try the sections under Our Research.
If an aspect of the issue has arisen in other states, the
web sites of other states, such as - New South Wales; Northern Territory; Queensland; Victoria; Western Australia and the Australian Federal government
may be useful sources of comparative information.
Report writing and referencing
For help in writing reports and essays and citing
references, see Report
writing for engineers
REMEMBER - In university work it is important to acknowledge your
sources of information and what influenced your ideas. You
will put a list of these sources at the end of your report and there
are a number of ways to do this.
One of the most widely used is the Author-Date
or Harvard system which is
described in the following
sites, with handy tables of examples of references for different sorts
of publications.
A useful starting point is -
University of South Australia. Learning Connection. Referencing
using the Harvard author-date system.
A 14-page document which can be saved to disk or opened as a Word file.
A more comprensive coverage is given in -
Harvard
Citation and Referencing Guide
Provides examples of how to present references for journal articles,
reports, chapters from books, web sites.
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