Online Search Strategies for Engineering Databases

According to the Engineers Council for Professional Development, engineering is "the creative application of scientific principles to design or develop structures, machines, apparatus, or manufacturing processes...to construct or operate the same with full cognizance of their design"[1]. Even though this definition is broad and far-reaching, it helps to set the boundaries of this chapter on online databases in engineering and the strategies for searching them. The term key above is application; engineering is more concerned with applications, in contrast to the physical sciences, which are more research-oriented. Because engineers are applications (or development)-oriented, engineering information tends to be scattered in a wide variety of databases; there are, however, a significant number of databases devoted to it. This chapter discusses these databases and some strategies suitable for searching them. Related areas such as energy, petroleum, and standards are not included. Caputo, and Worton[2] have briefly reviewed some of the online databases in engineering.