Navigating the Literature of Your Field With a little help from University Libraries Janet Fransen Engineering Librarian

How do engineering researchers communicate their results?

Sources Cited

Other Sources

Masters Theses Dissertations N=10 N=47

Places to Look Library Catalog (MNCAT) Licensed Databases (Compendex, Inspec) Professional Society Databases (IEEE Xplore) Publisher Web sites (Springer, Elsevier) Public Databases (Google Scholar) …and more

Starting Point:

MNCAT: Items we own (or license)

Licensed Databases

Licensed Databases for EE Inspec Compendex Web of Science Search together as Engineering Village

But what if we don’t have it?

Professional Societies IEEE (IEEE Xplore) –IEEE and IET journals, transactions, magazines, conferences, standards SPIE (SPIE Digital Library) –Technical papers from SPIE journals and conferences –Optics and Photonics

Professional Society Databases Look and act just like other subject databases Limited to content published by or made available to that society Find them in the A-Z list or on a Subject page

What about Google Scholar? Great breadth Depth varies Great for finding obscure things like technical reports of papers from proceedings that weren’t published Great for finding related work by an author

F. Liu, R. R. Yu, A. M. Young, J. P. Doyle, X. Wang, L. Shi, K.-N. Chen, X. Li, D. A. Dipaola, D. Brown, C. T. Ryan, J. A.Hagan, K. H. Wong, M. Lu, X. Gu, N. R. Klymko, E. D. Perfecto, A. G. Merryman, K. A. Kelly, S. Purushothaman, S. J. Koester, R. Wisnieff, and W. Haensch, “A 300-mm wafer-level three-dimensional integration scheme using tungsten through-silicon via and hybrid Cu-adhesive bonding,” IEDM Tech. Digest, (2008), Proceedings of the 2008 International Electron Devices Meeting, San Francisco, CA, Dec , 2008.

Now that you’ve found it… How do you keep track of it?

Citation Managers RefWorks –Free to U of M students, faculty, staff –Web-based –Create an account at our site Zotero –Free to anyone –Firefox-based UI, local database that can sync to the Web –Download from Zotero.org

Citation Managers Mendeley –Free –Great for managing and annotating PDFs Most databases support export to several citation managers

Want to know more? See our Workshops, Tutorials, and Guides page

Library Hacks

What else do I do? Select books and subscriptions –Suggestions? Let me know. Teach workshops –Public workshops listed online –Custom workshop? Contact me. Work with my colleagues to improve services –Suggestions? Let me know.

What else do I do? Consult on subject-specific questions –Not sure where to start a lit search? –Can’t track down an elusive citation? Consult on managing information –How to add your papers to our institutional repository (conservancy.umn.edu) –How to keep current and organize what you collect

What else do I do? Work with faculty and instructors to incorporate library resources into classes

Contact me at: Website: z.umn.edu/umjanlib Office hours: Thursdays 3-4 in the Student Center