Introduction to Research Skills in Engineering Before you start Find books Find articles Internet starting points Using and citing Useful Links Engineering Library Engineering Faculty MyUni WebCT Ask A Librarian

Finding books on your topic

1. Where to start: the library catalogue      2. How to search: using keywords      3. Finding the books on the shelves
	4. Books in Reserve 5. Other ways to search the catalogue

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Where to start: the library catalogue

The library catalogue is easy to find on our web site: it's the first item in the dark navigation bar of every library screen. This is the tool to find books, journals and other publications, both in print and online.



You can search it in different ways, using the tabs at the top: keyword, title, author or the options under Other Searches.

• Use keyword to look for a book by topic
• Use title or author when looking for a specific book,
• Use reserve to look for course readings, such as books or articles, including e-Reserve
• You can search for a journal by its title and check volume and issue numbers

But don't try to use the catalogue to find other articles by topic. This will be explained later in the tutorial, under Find articles

How to search: using keywords

When you are looking for books on a topic, use the library catalogue and search by keyword; it comes up by default, otherwise click the blue Keyword tab at the top. Use the concepts and keywords you found when you analysed your topic. Type a word (eg. ethics) or an expression consisting of two or more words (eg. "environmental sustainability"). Use " " if you want the exact phrase, ie. the words in the order that you entered them.

• "climate change" is more specific and will find fewer results than the same words without the quotation marks

If your search finds lots of items, you may just want to see what is available in the Engineering Library for instance:

• After you submitted your search, click the Modify Search button at the top (or bottom) of the screen, then select Location: Engineering, using the drop box halfway down the page, then click Submit

A better strategy is to narrow your search by combining keywords.

Combining keywords

Very often you will have a combination of keywords, such as oral communication, engineering, or teamwork, construction industry and you need to combine the terms. This is done using and which has the meaning of 'as well as'. You need to spell out 'and', do not use & or + instead.

• Example: energy and environment

Avoid long descriptive phrases, such as 'the importance of oral communications in engineering' but break it down into the main concepts, disregarding the 'extra' words.

Alternative terms

Sometimes your search will find very little or nothing, so you need to widen it by including alternative terms. Synonyms or alternative expressions can be combined in one search using or.

• Example: energy or power

It is possible to combine and and or in a single search. Group similar terms together using brackets.

• Example: (energy or power) and environment

Use the truncation symbol * to search for varying forms or spellings of a word.

• Example: engineer* searches for engineering, engineer/s, engineered etc.

Finding the books on the shelves

Look at the list resulting from your search. When you see a title that looks promising, you can check the details, for instance:


In this example, there are three copies of the book, in two locations (libraries). Note the call number, including the space (333.7914_4) and the status. Check shelf means the book should be available. Find out more about locating books or ask library staff for help.

Books in Reserve

To find books in Engineering Reserve, see E-Reserve in the next part of the tutorial.

Other ways to search the catalogue

You can search for a book from your reading list, for example:

• Beder, S., The New Engineer: Management and professional responsibility in a changing world, Macmillan, 2000

The best way is a title search; type the exact title. With a long title like this (the new engineer: management and professional responsibility in a changing world) just type the first 5 to 6 words, that is usually enough to find the book, and don't worry about capitals and punctuation.
An author search (beder s) will also find other books by the same author and can thus take longer to find the right book.
Book citations should also include a publisher, a place and date of publication, but those other details are not so useful for a catalogue search.

     The next part of the tutorial is about finding articles                               Your feedback?
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