Searching for references

• Browse through the databases available on the library website to get an idea of what is available.
• Worldcat is a database of libraries collections from around the world. They didn’t use to have articles (only journals, books, and collection titles) but now they are getting them. The site is expanding outside of United States libraries and it is now becoming more global.
• In Worldcat, Firstsearch may display more information about the item.
• NTRL and NTIS are good places to find technical reports that were government sponsored in some way.
• After you find a citation for an item you want make sure to check Harvest to see if UC Davis has the item.
• If you use UC-elinks to automatically search the Harvest or Melvyl catalogs the search is limited to only one category. It is better to manually search the catalogs via the library website.
• If you can’t find the item in Harvest, Melvyl or UC Davis’s database subscriptions then just request it…don’t spend time searching anymore. But feel free to add any helpful info for the librarian, like websites that may have the item.
• Don’t be afraid to ask the librarians for anything. Feel free to run references by them at any stage of the search process. That is what they are there for and the like when we get them involved in our searches.
• There are two options for requesting items: UC-elinks (appears in database and google scholar searches) and the manual request. UC-elinks isn’t always faster on the request items, it is better to use the manual form. You can use UC-elinks if you are already in the database, but use the manual form otherwise.
• If your item is NASA related, UC Davis probably has it or access.
• Compendex is a broad engineering database and good place to start searching.
• Web of science is a broad database and another decent place to start.
• PSE does have ASME stuff. Earlier than 2000 we have print versions. Search in Compendex or the ASME digital library (this doesn’t have always full text though).
• UC-elinks is great for checking if PSE has journal articles.
• It may be illegal to post a pdf of your own paper online but you may be able to put up a preprint. Check Sherpa Romeo to check what publishers allow in terms of copyright.
• Any papers we publish in Springer journals are open access from 2008 forward. You may not have to select open access when publishing toSpringer journals, it should automaticallly be OA if you are affiliated with UC Davis.
• Google, Google Scholar and Google Books are great search tools but may not search back in time very deep and you don’t know what they are covering, it could be any collection. Make sure to make use of advanced search techniques to home in on what you are looking for. Double quotes (” “) are good for searching titles as exact phrases.

• If you are looking for new SAE papers try searching Google. Some companies post them randomly. Use -site:sae.org so you don’t search the SAE.org website.

• The full version of Adobe Acrobat will convert a .tif document with OCR’d test to a .pdf document with the selectable text in tact. This is good for microfiche scans.

This lab meeting was a follow up to a more general talk given by Karen Andrews and Bob Heyer-Grayon November 12th, 2009 for the MAE seminar. The following are the notes provided by Karen and Bob from that talk: