Engineering

Search Strings

Combine keywords and phrases to form a "search string."

Example) "climate refugees" AND immigration policies AND "United States"

or... ("climate refugees" OR "climate change") AND immigration AND "United States" AND policies

AND tells the database you are looking for ALL of the listed terms and will narrow your results

OR tells the database you want EITHER of the listed terms and will help expand your results if you're not finding what you're looking for

You can also use NOT to tell the database you do NOT want to see sources with the specified term(s).

Quotes

Notice how key phrases are grouped together with quotation marks.

Ex.) "climate refugees"  /  "United States"

Using quotes tells the database to search for the words together as a phrase instead of searching for each word independently. Note that while this can be a very helpful tool, especially when you are looking for a very specific phrase, sometimes you might want to try searching for the terms without quotes. It's a good idea to try searches using quotes around key phrases and without to see which results in better results.

Filters

Filters are a useful tool in narrowing your search results to the specific type of source you are looking for. The most common filters you will likely use are:

• Publication Date - typically you will look for sources published within the past 5-10 years, but depending on your research question or topic that range could change.
• Material Type - this filter is helpful when you are looking specifically for books, articles, or another type of resource. Be sure to consider which resource type will best fit your needs before applying this filter.
• Peer Reviewed - if you are looking for academic articles, you will most likely want to use the "Peer Reviewed" filter as these articles are often considered the "gold standard" of scholarly articles. 

Although these are the most common types of filters people use when searching for resources, do not limit yourself to these and feel free to explore and use other available filters as you feel are useful and appropriate for your research.

These resources will allow you to search for articles and conference proceedings.  Full-text may be available, but if not, you can request a document through interlibrary loan.

Please note that accessing standards can be a difficult process.  Many organizations emphasize corporate customers over academic institutions, so we are not able to easily license access to collections of standards or codes.  Please consult the resources on the research guide for technical standards for suggestions on how to identify and access relevant standards.

• Research guide for technical standards

Please consult the resources on the research guide for patents for suggestions on how to identify and access both US and international patents.

• Research guide for patents