Slide 1
Scientific and technical information is the key component of effective research. In today’s highly competitive world, engineers must stay on top of ever-emerging technologies. During the preliminary design stage, the engineer must determine which of several alternatives is the best course to take. From dissertations to conference papers to technical reports to physical science bibliographic literature, this presentation provides an overview of the vast data collection on Dialog.
Slide 2
When the 3,500 members of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons meet in Philadelphia in May, 2010, they plan to go paperless and deliver their conference proceedings to their audience via iPods, which each ticket-holder will get when he or she walks in the door. The innovation is part of a new trend of organizations turning to electronics rather than paper to deliver their conference papers. This small step toward green technology follows the growth of electronic devices that people now recognize and use. What’s behind the surge in ingenuity? Who are the innovators in electronics and where are they getting their inspiration?
Slide 3
Perhaps through the research and study they found information that enabled them to take existing technology and apply it to energy-saving ideas, such as using iPods to present paperless proceedings. Engineers are always finding ways to work with products to make them better, faster and economical.
Slide 4
Are you looking for reliable sources to verify the feasibility of an idea or invention? Do you need to confirm a technology’s life-cycle? Do you have to track your competitors – both those you know and those just getting started? Perhaps you’re in the process of running prior art studies on a new idea to ensure you have begun to build something truly novel. Where better to start than in a search engine that is among the broadest and deepest information sources available?
Slide 5
When you want to make sure you are the first with a fresh idea, you need to go below the surface Web with a powerful search engine that lets you dig deeply and then slice, dice and analyze your retrieval. In the process you want to document your findings by building a bibliographic verification of the prior and state-of-the art in both patent and non-patent technical and business literature. Dialog has comprehensive content you can count on, with nearly two billion records of authoritative data, including 239 million scientific and technical literature abstracts.
Slide 6
This is a sample Dialog record following a search on nanotweezers. The article retrieved comes from an IEEE international conference on intelligent robots and systems.
Slide 7
Along with the content, Dialog has powerful commands and search tools to make your job of finding the information you need quick, easy and comprehensive. For example, you can run keyword searches on emerging concepts and then use a command that displays the publication years in ascending order of articles that discussed the concepts. This produces a glimpse of the technology’s life cycle, from earliest mention to most recent. Secondly, you can draw up a list of the corporate sources (the companies or organizations) from which the article authors came. You can see the competitive landscape, expertise and levels of interest.
Slide 8
Engineering is one of the oldest professions and Dialog has answers to all areas in the field, including the three main branches of engineering: civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering. Civil engineering is concerned with the building of bridges, dams, harbors, roads, tunnels, etc. It includes not only the actual construction but studies of traffic flow, fluid mechanics, soil mechanics, and geology. Mechanical engineering is concerned with the design, construction, and operation of engines and machinery and involves the practical application of the principles of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and the mechanics of materials. Electrical engineering deals with the whole field of applications of electricity, including power generation, power transmission, telecommunications, and electronic computers.
Slide 9
These are just some of the areas of engineering that Dialog covers:
Slide 10
Get what you need quickly from the trustworthy sources you can count on. Look to the engineering societies, such as the Institution of Engineering and Technology (The IET) and the IEEE, established publications, such as Engineering Index, and the major publishers, such as CSA, Elsevier, U.S. Department of Energy, Jane’s Information Group, Forecast International/ DMS, National Technical Information Service, the British Library, Wilson, Petroleum Abstracts and more.
Slide 11
As a civil engineer working on designing subway tracks in tunnels, Civil Engineering Abstracts from CSA (File 61), which has journals such as Railway Age, RT&S: Railway Track & Structures and Journal of Sound and Vibration, can help. Other places to look include Mechanical & Transportation Abstracts (File 14) and Transportation Research Information Services (TRIS) (File 63), from the Transportation Research Board, as well as GeoRef (File 89), from the American Geological Institute.
Slide 12
A bioengineer looking to optimize energy consumption within on-demand pressurized irrigation networks could retrieve journals such as BiosystemsEngineering or Chemical Engineering Science or Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering in PASCAL (File 144), which comes from the Scientific and Technical Information Institute of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).
Slide 13
A mechanical engineer might look to any number of collections, including Engineered Materials Abstracts® (File 293), from CSA, FLUIDEX (Fluid Engineering Abstracts) (File 96), from Elsevier B.V., Ceramic Abstracts/World Ceramics Abstracts (File 335), from CSA, and Ei Compendex® (File 8), from Elsevier B.V.
Slide 14
Nanotechnology is pervasive and fundamental to all aspects of engineering, physical and life science. Dialog brings you excellent sources on the topic, including Nanotechnology, Microwave and Optical Sciences, Microelectronic Engineering and the Journal of Nanoparticle Research. Publishers include the Institute of Physics Publishing Ltd., Elsevier BV, Springer and more.
Slide 15
Someone developing the next generation of global communications instruments would look to Inspec® (File 2), from the IET mentioned above, with journals such as IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, Video Engineering and Proceedings of the SPIE - The International Society of Optical Engineering. Ei Compendex (File 8), ANTE: Abstracts in New Technologies and Engineering (File 60), from CSA, Energy Science and Technology (File 103), from the U.S. Department of Energy, and PASCAL (File 144), from the French Institute of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) are all excellent sources of data engineers can depend on.
Slide 16
This completes our overview of engineering content on Dialog. Thank you for your interest in these comprehensive sources. See and hear an interview with Dialog’s Engineering team at www.dialog.com/about/team/engineering
