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Engineering Village LibGuide: Databases

A guide for how to get started, search, personalize and take advantage of Engineering Village.

Engineering Village offers access to the following 11 databases—including its flagship, Compendex. 

Compendex

What is it?
Compendex is Elsevier’s flagship engineering-focused database that provides comprehensive and trustworthy content to improve research outcomes and maximize the impact of your engineering research.

What does it cover?
Comprising journals, conference proceedings, dissertations, standards, books, and recently preprints, Compendex content is sourced from thousands of publishers from around the world, including major engineering societies such as IEEE, ASME, SAE and ACM.

Who is it for?
The interdisciplinary scholarly and technical literature in Compendex is vast and global in scope, featuring everything from the latest cutting-edge findings to historical research and innovations. This makes it an invaluable source of information for a variety of engineering projects.

Ei Backfile (exclusive to Engineering Village)

What is it?
The Ei Backfile provides a comprehensive, historical view of engineering innovations predating 1970. First published in 1884, The Engineering Index documented virtually every major engineering innovation from around the world.

What does it cover?
The content covers the disciplines of Civil and Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mining Engineering (electricity, coal mining , manufacturing, steel, bridge building, automotive, aerospace and transportation industries etc.).

Who is it for?
The Ei Backfile is an ideal resource for researchers who wish to explore the earlier, foundational discoveries in Engineering.

Inspec and Inspec Archive

What is it?
Inspec Analytics, a dynamic research intelligence tool based on the Inspec database, is fully integrated with Engineering Village. Inspec Analytics allows users to explore beyond the literature and uncover trends and patterns across thousands of organizations. The Inspec database, created by The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), contains over 22 million records from across global publishers to deliver quality content to a wide range of research communities.

For over 50 years, Inspec has been the essential discovery tool for numerous prestigious institutions worldwide. Inspec uses precise, subject-specific indexing to make it easy to pinpoint the exact research you need from the vast collection, saving time and ultimately, resources.

Inspec can be supplemented with the Inspec Archive to extend coverage. These series of journals cover 837,000 records dating back to 1898.

What does it cover?
Inspec contains records across physics, electrical engineering and electronics, computers and control, mechanical and production engineering, information technology and more.

The content includes journals, conference proceedings, preprints, reports, books, patents, dissertations, standards, patents, videos, trade journals and consumer magazines.

Who is it for?
Inspec provides academia, industry, and government with an intuitive, searchable database that covers a wide variety of fields.

GEOBASE

What is it?
As of August 2022, GEOBASE is a database of indexed research covering relevant international geoscience and geography literature, with an emphasis on human and physical geography, ecology, geology, oceanography, geomechanics and international development studies/impacts.

Who is it for?
GEOBASE covers multidisciplinary content enabling comprehensive geological evaluation of any desired region, including the geological structure and relation to natural resources as well as linking resource management, transport, and regional and urban planning.

What does it cover?
GEOBASE covers earth sciences, ecology, geology, human and physical geography, environmental sciences, oceanography, geomechanics, alternative energy sources, pollution, waste management and nature conservation (download the source list). The content crosses subject, language and cultural boundaries, providing a unique research tool to users.

GeoRef

What is it?
GeoRef provides international research literature focused primarily on geology and the geosciences. Produced by the American Geosciences Institute (AGI), GeoRef is focused on comprehensive coverage of geoscience literature published worldwide.

Who is it for?
GeoRef content is indexed with geoscience terms from the GeoRef Thesaurus, and geolocation data (latitude/longitude) is also assigned, when applicable. GeoRef is the most in-depth A&I database available for geoscience literature and research. This makes it an ideal resource for geoscientists, including geophysicists.

What does it cover?
GeoRef covers the following subject categories.

Knovel

What is it?
Knovel helps students save time, incorporate technical information into their work and expand their knowledge. With the same engineering resources and tools as professionals in the field, students are better prepared for a technology-driven and competitive job market.

  • Single platform, many providers: Content from the National Institute of Packt, Standards & Technology (NIST), Wiley, Springer Nature, Elsevier and many more on a single platform
  • Unique training environment: Interdisciplinary breadth combined with an intuitive user interface helps students enhance information literacy and creative problem-solving
  • Early exposure to industry: Build applied engineering and research skills with dynamic content, trusted references, technical references and industry best practices

What does it cover?

Knovel provides access to technical reference content across engineering disciplines and applied sciences. The platform covers a wide range of topics including chemical engineering, civil engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, materials science, and environmental engineering. Knovel's content includes handbooks, databases, and interactive tools that help students, engineers and scientists solve technical problems and make data-driven decisions.

Comprehensive sources
160+ engineering content providers covering 35 subject areas and 230 subtopics.

Essential knowledge
More than 12,000 full text resources curated from books to materials databases.

Materials databases
Hundreds of thousands of materials and substances and more than 100 properties.

Unique interactive tools
20,000 tables, 150,000 graphs, 3,000 equations, steam calculators and a unit converter.

Text and numeric search designed for engineers
Search and filter by concept, content type, industry, and author. Analyze and locate answers in full-text reference materials.

Who is it for?

Knovel helps prepare students for future engineering careers in a technology-driven and globally competitive work environment.

Knovel enables engineering students to:

  • Discover essential engineering references
  • Establish valid information sources and learn about best practices
  • Gain hands-on experience exploring possible solutions to problems
  • Use data to test ideas, assess feasibility and determine best course of action
  • Build experience using a platform leveraged by top engineering firms worldwide

Ei Patents

What is it?

Ei Patents allows researchers to explore to scientific and technical information found within US (USPTO), European (EPO) and World (WIPO) patent records.

What does it cover?
Overall – 3 patent databases with 30M patents

  • WIPO = 5M patents dating from 1978 to present
  • EPO = 6.55m patents dating from 1978 to present
  • USPTO = 18.8M patents dating from 1790 to present

Who is it for?
Whether you are preparing a patent application, tracking a technology, identifying a potential collaborator or competitor, or you simply want to learn more about developments in your field, the patent documents in Ei Patents provide an essential source for thorough, successful research.

In Academia, patent literacy is increasingly taught to engineers as part of the curriculum. Students preparing to enter the industry need to understand, discover and use patents to have the knowledge to protect their future employers from litigation, re-work, and wasted time.

National Technical Information Service (NTIS)

What is it?
The National Technical Information Service (NTIS) database is the premier source of unclassified reports from the United States and international government agencies. It is the US Federal Government’s Clearinghouse for scientific, technical information (STEI) produced by or for Federal agencies.

Who is it for?
Universities, non-profits, and industry professionals, providing access to scientific research and information published in so-called grey literature, such as technical reports.

What does it cover?
NTIS covers a range of subject areas including Electrotechnology, Energy and Health Care...read more.

PaperChem

What is it?
PaperChem is a database of abstracted and indexed literature created specifically for research in the pulp and paper industries, covering chemistry and engineering to production technology. The content is carefully curated from pulp and paper-focused publications as well as pulp and paper-related papers published in multidisciplinary publications. It is one of the pulp and paper industry's most important resources for news and information.

Who is it for?
Discovery of research and application of pulp and paper technologies for both academic and corporate audiences, such as pulp and papermaking, cellulose modifications, packaging, filter/membrane preparation, surface coatings, and recycling.

What does it cover?
PaperChem covers topics related to chemistry, engineering, and production technology (download the source list) used by the pulp and paper industry, such as: Engineering and process control, Power, Graphic arts and more.

Indexed with the Thesaurus of Pulp and Paper, with over 22K terms.

It features the following content types: Scholarly journals, trade magazines, patents, conferences, doctoral dissertations, books

Chemical Business NewsBase

What is it?
Chemical Business NewsBase (CBNB) contains news, in-depth commentary and insightful analysis regarding the chemical industry. The leading provider of worldwide chemical business news and information, CBNB includes records from the following sources:

  • core trade journals, newspapers, and company newsletters
  • books, market research reports, company reports
  • press releases

It includes financial and business data from influential chemical companies, the latest industry R&D news, intelligence on government legislation changes, and analysis of economic trends. With weekly updates and over 2 million records, CBNB is the premiere news source for chemical business information.

Who is it for?
CBNB provides timely information for tracking market trends, commercial, and regulatory developments in the chemical and chemical engineering industry.

What does it cover?
CBNB covers a range of industrial sectors, with news and business information from a host of companies.

 

Chimica

What is it?
Chimica provides chemistry and chemical engineering researchers with the current and trustworthy information they need to achieve successful results. It includes a weekly updated database of engineering literature abstracts created specifically for chemistry and chemical engineering research, indexing the most influential, international chemistry journals to keep engineers current with the latest developments in their field, including inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, applied chemistry, analytical chemistry, chemical engineering and general chemistry.

What does it cover?
Chimica covers (download the source list) the following disciplinary areas:

  • Applied chemistry
  • Analytical chemistry
  • Chemical engineering
  • Inorganic chemistry
  • Organic chemistry
  • General chemistry

Who is it for?
Chimica offers up-to-date information of the chemical technologies applied in the engineering domain, which makes it an important source for chemists, engineers and researchers who need to take advantage of technologies from chemistry and chemical engineering.