Library Research Sophomore Engineering Clinic September 2014

Clinic Research Day Today’s problem:  Finding good sources for your:  rhetorical analysis  annotated bibliography  literature review Your guide:  Denise Brush,  engineering librarian 

Types of sources Less formal publication process  Websites  Blogs  White papers  Technical reports  Pre-prints  Social media More formal publication process  Newspaper articles  Magazine articles  Industry/trade news  Conference papers  Journal articles  Patents  Books/book chapters

Periodicals – a brief history  Published at regular “periods” – daily, weekly, monthly etc.  Each publication called an “issue” and dated as well as numbered  Can buy individual copies at stores, or subscribe & have copies mailed to you  Libraries traditionally purchased subscriptions to many periodicals and bound the issues into yearly “volumes”

Ways to find sources – most to least “precise” searching  Library E-Journals search (search by name of specific periodical)  Search E-Resources collections  from professional associations (ASME, ASCE, IEEE)  from big science publishers (Elsevier, Springer)  Search E-Resources from mega-publishing aggregators(ProQuest, EBSCO)  Use comprehensive search engines: Prof Search (Rowan library search) or Google Scholar

Magazines as a genre  General audience – anyone with interest in subject area of magazine (news, fashion, money, golf, science, technology etc.)  Writers may be subject matter experts (or not); articles reviewed only by magazine staff  Usually contain advertising, but also charge money to buy in stores or subscribe  Print format changing over to online access, with many publishers going out of business

Searching E-Journals by title Let’s say you want to find an article in Technology Review.

Magazine article example  Search by ‘title equals’ Technology Review in E-Journals, then select General Science FT  Choose: May/Jun 2014  Enter: ‘solar power’  “Smart Wind and Solar Power” by Kevin Bullis, May/Jun 2014, Vol. 117 Issue 3, p  Note genre icon

Trade news as a genre  Audience consists of employees of industries covered by the particular publication (electronics, automobiles)  Like with magazines, authors are usually full time or freelance writers  Advertising is very targeted, and most publications are subscription only  Transition to online is going more slowly

Trade news article example  Search in E-Journals for Chemical & Engineering News  Choose Issues – Sept. 1  “LyondellBasell To Build U.S. Propylene Oxide Plant” by Alexander H. Tullo  Volume 92 Issue 35 | p. 13 | News of The Week; Issue Date: September 1, 2014

What is a library database?  Originally it was the digital version of an index to scholarly abstracts in an academic field: a reference book used to find journal articles  They have evolved into online collections of articles, e-books, book chapters, and conference papers, plus some citations  Some databases still focus on certain academic fields, but others have expanded to try to be comprehensive

Search E-Resources for Engineering (databases)

Conference proceedings  Every industry and academic field holds conferences (including libraries!)  A mixture of business meetings, workshops and presentations, and opportunities to talk to vendors in the field  Academic conferences accept (or reject) research papers for presentation  Presented papers are compiled into a volume of “proceedings” at the end

ASME Digital Collection  ASME Digital Collection is published by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, but the site is hosted by an IT company called SILVERCHAIR  ASME is a membership organization for mechanical engineers that probably has a student chapter here at Rowan  They publish many journals and run lots of conferences, even publish some books  Everything on the site is published by ASME

Conference paper example  Select ASME  Use Conference Proceedings tab  Search “wind turbines”  Article: “Small scale wind turbines optimized for Class 2 Wind” (T.A. Burdett, K.W. Treuren)  “Proc. ASME 45660”

Journals  Written for and by professionals in specific academic fields (engineers, doctors, etc.)  Intended to report results of research  Usually subscription only, no advertising  Published formally (print or online) after extensive competitive review process  Publisher may be a professional society or a commercial publisher, and online hosting may be through third party firm

Journal article example  Choose Journals tab in ASME database  Search on “solar cells”  “Development of scalable and low cost polymer solar cell test platform” B. Reeja- Jayan and others  What is the Source? J. Sol. Energy Eng. 2013, (volume) 135 (issue) 4

GREENFILE (EBSCO)  GREENFILE is an example of a database from an “aggregator” – a company that provides citation information for many articles of different types (and publishers) but not necessarily the full text  Good for finding sources from a variety of publishers, but not as targeted a search  Problems include determining genre and getting access to full text of articles

Aggregator database search - GREENFILE  Select E-Resources by Subject – Engineering  Select GREENFILE  Search for ‘LEED design’  View results list  Note “Source Type” limiter option

Getting the “Full Text”  When searching in a comprehensive database with a variety of publishers, often you’ll run across citations to articles in sources that database doesn’t offer full text access to  For this situation, select the button labeled “Get It” – this invokes the Serial Solutions Article Linker, to check for other online sources for the particular article you need  Sometimes, it takes you to another database; next, we’ll see example when it does not

Interlibrary Loan example  Select first article, ”The new wave of sustainable planning”  Click on Get it !  Select the Submit a Request to Campbell Library link (next slide)

Using Iliad

Google and Prof Search  Google Scholar is a specialized search engine for scholarly articles and patents  Sources found this way are usually “good” but may be less formal (white papers) or be published in sources not accessible to us  Prof Search is a search engine specific to Rowan University library sources  Also offers good sources, but can give you less relevant or only “popular” results

Google Scholar example  E-Resources by title: G  Google Scholar  Search “biodiesel”  Observe: articles in journals have Full Text at Rowan links  Patents, technical reports, etc.

ProfSearch example “all-electric cars”

Conclusions  We’ve come a long way from printed journals to digital collections and search engines  With access now primarily online, it can take some detective work to find out what the real source of content is  Often intellectual content is re-packaged and aggregated and re-hosted, so it helps to understand history & information architecture  Your librarians can help!