Here are 1,639 engineering resources in English. The selection is mainly from North American (USA and Canada) and international sources. Each has a full reference and a brief description. The resources include texts, journals directories, dictionaries, databases, Internet sites, trade literature buyer’ guides and more.
The first chapter is about how engineers use literature, and includes an account of how the engineering profession manages information. Then there are chapters on general reference sources, information access tools, journals both scholarly and trade, grey literature, buyers guides, Internet, regulations and standards, Government (that is US and Canadian only) resources, associations, and education and career resources.
The chapters are subdivided by disciplines from aerospace to nuclear engineering including computers and agriculture. There is an appendix of publishers’ Web sites. The book has a very full index of titles and names covering 45 pages.
It looks a very thorough piece of work. I found INSPEC and references to two subfiles in areas that one might not immediately think of INSPEC. But I found neither CAB International or Agricola (the US agricultural database) although both cover agricultural engineering. However, even this book cannot include everything, and as long as the omissions are ones of limited interest there is no great problem. The most recent viewing dates for Internet sites are April 2000, which is pretty good for a book that went on sale in August, so one can assume that the book is up to date.
Guides to literature come in two sorts, the discursive accounts and the lists. There is a place for both. The discursive accounts introduce the reader to the subject, its problems and its literature. Once one has got the grasp of the subject one usually wants more references, so one looks for a list. Charles Lord’s book is a good example of the list type. The restriction of the choice of entries to North American and International is, for the most part, no great problem in a subject like engineering. The Internet has in effect made all points in the world adjacent. The sections on organisations and Government sources will be of less use outside the USA, than within. Unless, that is, that you want to find out how engineering is organised and managed in the USA and Canada.
This book is useful guide to resources in engineering. Libraries in higher education, those doing engineering research, and companies trading in engineering with North America are the most likely purchasers of this book
