1. Research Science and Engineering
Information
By Eugene Barsky
Science & Engineering Librarian
Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, UBC
eugene.barsky@ubc.ca
Fall/Winter 2009

2. Agenda
Searching for books and journals
Connecting to full text articles from home
Understanding the subject guides
Finding your liaison librarian
Locating the articles that UBC does not own
Reviewing your library account
Researching SciEng databases
Citing articles

3. UBC Library site
Ways to get to your library site:
http://www.library.ubc.ca
Google ‘ubc library’
Relatively new site – we welcome your feedback!

4. Search for books
Click on “Books, videos... (Catalogue) “ under “find” to start searching
for books and videos
You can search by:
Keywords
Title
Author
Much more: publisher, call number, etc.
Lets try to find books on the topic of thermodynamics

5. Search for books
There are a number of ways to search for books on thermodynamics:
Type your keyword(s) in the search box and click enter – you will
see all books that mention it somewhere in the title or description
Type your topic and select title from the menu – more precise –
you will find books with this topic in the title of the book
Type your topic and select “subject headings” – very good
technique – you will find all books that focus on this topic,
collocated in one place
Don’t forget to sort the results as you wish: year of publication, title,
author or limit those by a specific library location

6. Search for journals (not articles!)
If you want to find a specific journal you need, then the journal search
might come handy!
Go to the UBC Library catalogue (where you searched for books)
Type the name of the journal you need in the “Journal/Ejournal
Title search” box in the bottom of the page
Select your journal from the list to view the holdings

7. Search for journals (not articles!)
Let’s try to locate the Nature journal
We have electronic access to this journal from 1987 on…
Moreover, click on UBC Print Holdings to see where we keep it in
print (earlier years…)

8. Search for articles – Connect from home
In order to get full text access of the journals articles and ebooks that
UBC Library purchases for you, you have to establish a remote access
to our servers – so the system will authenticate you as being a UBC
person…
Why to set up a remote access?
See detailed instructions from the library homepage or go directly to
http://www.library.ubc.ca/home/proxyinfo

9. Search for articles – Connect from home
Follow the detailed instructions on our pages
We recommend using VPN, or Virtual Private Network – it is easy to
install and run and you have to do it only once!!
http://www.library.ubc.ca/home/proxyinfo/#VPN
For installation help, please contact UBC IT @ 604-822-2008 or
http://web.it.ubc.ca/forms/isf/js/

10. Search for articles
Now it is a good time to search for articles for your topic…
There is no ONE place in Science and Engineering where you will find
all information you need…too bad, eh?
You will need to work with two or three major databases for your
specific subject
How do you find those databases for your subject?
We are here to guide you ☺
Let’s take a look on the library subject guides

11. Subject guides
Subject guides include lists of suggested databases, books, and
additional resources available at UBC and beyond on certain subjects
Access subject guides via library homepage >> subject guides (under
subject resources column – 3rd from the left)
Let’s take a look on Computer Science, shall we?

12. Search for articles – subject guides
Here we list the major databases for this science area where you can
find relevant information for your topics
Moreover we list major works, e.g. dictionaries, ebook collections,
encyclopaedias, etc for the particular subject area
This is a great place to start your research

13. Search for articles – subject guides
The name and contact info of the relevant liaison librarian is displayed
at the bottom. And you can even chat with some of them right there,
from the same page ☺
We will cover the major databases for Science and Engineering in our
later workshops today – Compendex, Web of Science, etc…

14. Your subject librarians
For most of the subject offered in UBC, there is a professional librarian
responsible for liaison with the faculty
S/he would be just delighted if you contact her/his for any information
needs you might have
Find your librarian via UBC Library homepage >> subject librarians
(under subject resources, 3rd category from the left)

15. Your Science and Engineering Librarians
There are three (3) librarians in our division responsible to reference,
instruction and collections:
Aleteia Greenwood – aleteia.greenwood@ubc.ca
Kevin Lindstrom – kevin.lindstrom@ubc.ca
Eugene Barsky – eugene.barsky@ubc.ca
See our area of responsibilities, contact info and more from the
Science and Engineering library page -
http://www.library.ubc.ca/scieng/

16. Your Science and Engineering Library
http://www.library.ubc.ca/scieng/
See Science and Engineering subject guides, online tutorials, tailored
course pages, relevant ebooks and much-much more…
Contact your subject librarian by phone, email, in-person or IM

17. eBooks in the UBC Library
eBooks is still an unresolved issue in academic libraries
Bear with us while we try to understand how to handle them
Major packages of eBooks for Science and Engineering:
Knovel
EngNetBase, StatNetBase, MathNetBase
Books 24x7 IT Collection
SpringerLink Collection
Those and much more are accessible from
http://toby.library.ubc.ca/resources/ebooklist.cfm

18. eBooks in the library
See also the Science and Engineering Library webpage that lists
SciEng related books by title…
http://www.library.ubc.ca/scieng/ebooks.html
Most ebooks are also listed in the UBC Library catalogue

19. Getting items not in UBC Library
UBC library does not buy every single book or journal published out
there
We simply don’t have money to do that…We would love to though ☺
However, you still can get almost any article, video or book that you
need for your research
In our jargon, we call it Interlibrary Loan (ILL)

20. Getting items not in UBC Library
If you need an item not owned by the UBC Library, just follow the link
that says “Borrow from other libraries (ILL) “ from the library
homepage (under “How to” category – 2nd from the left)
Follow the simple steps to request the item/s you need
Reminder: In Science and Engineering disciplines, your first source of
requesting items would be the Canada Institute for Scientific and
Technical Information (CISTI) – very fast – usually just a couple of
business days…

21. Your library account
No, we haven’t integrated our library accounts with your Facebook
account yet ☺
So, you will need to go to your UBC library account to see and renew
the books you borrowed
Access it from the library homepage >> click on renew books (under
my account category – 4th from the left)
We send you automatic email reminders if your books are due or new
books have … aren't we nice?

22. Research Resources for your discipline
We recommend to start with the subject guide for your discipline
Subject guides are lists of suggested databases, books, and additional
resources available at UBC on certain subjects
Access subject guides via library homepage >> subject guides (under
subject resources column – 3rd from the left)
Let’s take a look on Mining engineering, shall we?

23. Research Resources for your discipline
Here we list the major databases for this science/engineering area where
you can find relevant information for your topics
Moreover we list major works, e.g. dictionaries, ebook collections,
encyclopaedias, etc for the particular subject area
This is a great place to start your research
And find your liaison librarian (bottom of the page)

24. Compendex – what is it?
Let’s start with Compendex
Compendex is a primary database of core literature of the engineering
fields
Coverage is from 1884 till today
Citations are drawn from approximately 5,000 journals and key
conference proceedings
It is a #1 resource for research in most engineering disciplines
Is updated weekly

25. Compendex – getting there
To get to Compendex:
UBC Library homepage >> Databases >> Compendex
Don’t forget to use VPN or proxy connection -
http://www.library.ubc.ca/home/proxyinfo/

26. Compendex – quick search
The default search option is “quick search”
You can search by (drop down menus):
Keywords anywhere
Keywords in title
Authors
Much more…

27. Compendex – quick search
Let’s try an example
Anything that you would like to research?
We could also try my example:
Magnetically levitated vehicles OR MagLev vehicles - ("Magnetically
levitated" OR MagLev) AND vehicles

28. Compendex – quick search
Lets explore the results screen now…
You can re-arrange the results from the screen top by Date/relevance/ or
authors and more
Click on the abstract to view the articles
Use “refine results” on the right to narrow your results to:
Authors
Topics
Type of article
More…

29. Compendex – quick search
Use as many limiters as you want to narrow your searches if you have
too many results…
Click on the records you like and those will be saved under “Selected
Records” (upper part of your screen) for a later use…

30. Compendex – quick search
You can limit your searches to specific years, document types and
languages from the basic search screen

31. Compendex – author search
We recommend to use Author browsing when searching for authors,
accessible from the start screen
Better to do it from “Expert Search” screen…
It is a more comprehensive way to locate all articles written by a specific
person, since sometimes middle names, initials, etc are missed or
misspelled
Let’s try an example for Prof. Dirk Van Zyl (UBC Mining faculty)

32. Compendex – full text access
It is easy to check every Compendex article as to whether UBC Library
has full text of it…
Some articles are embedded in full text into the database, look for this
icon -
Other are accessible via the UBC eLink (seen after opening the article’s
abstract or detailed view)
Note: UBC eLink does not work for most conference papers!

33. Compendex – full text access
We will always be happy to get you the articles that are not in UBC – just
use “Borrow from other libraries (ILL)” link from the library homepage
Follow the steps on that page and we will get you the article(s) or book(s)
that you need!

34. Compendex – manage citations
After selecting the articles you want to proceed with, you can email, print,
save or upload those citations to RefWorks

35. Compendex – self-practice:
Five minutes exercise on Compendex – try your own example and see
how it works for you
Raise your hand if you need to talk to us

36. Web of Science
Web of Science is an excellent multi-disciplinary citation database
Allows following citation trails – who cited whom, how many times and
where…
Covers many subjects, including Physical Sciences, Medical Sciences,
Life Sciences, Applied Sciences, Agriculture, Humanities and Social
Sciences, Law, and Business
Access: Library homepage >> Databases >> Web of Science or directly
at http://toby.library.ubc.ca/resources/infopage.cfm?id=277

37. Web of Science
The default search screen allows to search all three subsets for this
database: Science, Social Sciences and Art and Humanities together

38. Web of Science
Start searching by typing your keywords into the first search box and
leave “Topic” selected in the drop-down menu.
Let’s try an example of quantum computing – “quantum comput*”
We retrieve almost 5,000 results

39. Web of Science
Let’s take a look on those results now:
Like in Compendex, we can refine our results by various categories, e.g.
subjects or document types
For our topic we can select review articles only
We could select other limits, such as years, authors, etc…

40. Web of Science
Moreover, we can re-arrange the results by times cited (superficially
identifying the most prominent articles in this area)
Other sort options include authors/dates/journal title…

41. Web of Science
A very interesting feature in Web of Science allows us to analyze the
results we get for our topics
This function takes us to review the studies by various categories
As an example, let’s analyze our results by “source title” to see what journals
publish this type of content most frequently

42. Web of Science
Another useful function is author’s search, use “Author Finder” for the
most exhaustive searches
Let’s try Van Zyl, D
The subject fine-tuning option is interesting and useful

43. Web of Science
After you select you desired studies by using the checkboxes on the left
side of the articles, you can add your selection to “Marked List”
Access your marked list at the end of your session to email/print/export/

44. Web of Science
Access your marked list at the end of your session to email/print/export/
To export to RefWorks (not embedded), follow these instructions -
http://tinyurl.com/4v57sn
Otherwise, you can use EndNote (ISI product)

45. Web of Science
If you intend to use this database a lot, it makes sense to create a free
account to be able to benefit from:
E-mail alerts can be created from your saved search histories.
RSS feeds can be created from your saved search histories.
You will be able to access your saved histories from any computer at the
institution.

46. Web of Science
Any questions?
Try your own search for the next five minutes…
Raise your hand if you need to talk to the instructor(s) ☺

47. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses - Intro
Excellent source for theses and dissertations!
Contains over 2 million records
Doctoral dissertations: 1861-present
Masters theses: 1988-present (selective coverage, since many
institutions do not submit masters theses for inclusion)
Online abstracts for dissertations available since July 1980
Full text since 1997
Covers more than 90% of North American doctoral dissertations plus
growing international coverage

48. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses - Intro
Available online via the UBC Library
Homepage >> Databases >> ProQuest Dissertaions and Theses
Or - http://toby.library.ubc.ca/resources/infopage.cfm?id=32
Remember to use VPN to get access to this database and its full text

49. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses – simple search
The advanced search screen (default) allows to search for:
Keyword
Author
Degree
School
Much more…

50. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses – simple search
Lets try our simple example of “quantum comput*”
I want to see whether anybody has written a thesis about this topic

51. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses – simple search
Got more than 350 dissertations, including some from 2008
We can refine our search now, limiting by:
Subject
School
Masters/Doctoral, etc…

52. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses – simple search
For each thesis, you can view the:
Abstract (most dissertation starting with 1980)
24 page preview - thumbnail scanned image of the first 24 pages of a
dissertation
Full text – a PDF copy of the thesis full text (if UBC has access to it)

53. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses – your results
The database highlights our keywords we used for searching inside the
abstracts text – a very handy feature
We can see right away if the thesis is relevant

54. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses – your results
On the bottom of the abstracts, view the keywords used to organize this
thesis
Those are clickable and will bring you more dissertations focusing on the
same topic(s)…

55. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses – self-practice
Any questions?
Try your own search for the next five minutes…
Raise your hand if you need to talk with the instructor ☺

56. Google searches – some commands
If you use Google for your academic searches – this is fine
However, you can make your searches more precise with some Google
commands
For instance, site: command will allow you to search in specific web domains
only
Intitle: command will allow you to search your keywords in titles of
documents only, therefore making your searches more precise…

57. Google searches – some commands
See for yourself:
Here is a simple search for radio frequency identification or rfid
We got more than 2M results, are those good/bad?
Are you going to check all of them?

58. Google searches – some commands
See for yourself:
An alternative way is to use search commands:
intitle:rfid OR intitle:"radio frequency identification" site:ieee.org
This is a precise search for keywords in titles and specific website only
We get less than 2K results – and those are more reliable ones!!

59. Google Scholar – set up UBC eLink
Get full text of journals that UBC purchases for you via Google Scholar:
Go to http://scholar.google.com
Click on Scholar Preferences (right-upper corner of your screen)
Under Library Links, type UBC
From now on you will get a UBC eLink for each article UBC Library
buys for you

60. Google Scholar – set up UBC eLink
For more information on Google and Google Scholar come to one of our
tailored workshops:
Mastering Google for Science and Engineering
Check the schedule for free library workshops @
http://www.library.ubc.ca/scieng/ (click on Workshops)

61. Your Questions:
If you feel you need more information on how to use your library, please
contact one of our Science and Engineering Librarians:
Aleteia Greenwood (Head) – aleteia.greenwood@ubc.ca
Kevin Lindstrom – kevin.lindstrom@ubc.ca
Eugene Barsky – eugene.barsky@ubc.ca
Or visit our Science and Engineering library page -
http://www.library.ubc.ca/scieng/