ENGINEERING
INFORMATION SOURCES & ACCESS, the EISA-2 program
is designed for engineering students, particularly for upper
division undergraduates. In addition, the Program is well
suited for beginning graduate students, practicing
engineers, and anyone interested in learning how to
effectively search information in engineering related
disciplines.
Use
EISA-2 before you go to the library; during the
planning stages of your papers; to find a topic for a
specialization paper; to explore job market; to get a feel
for a hot topic; to see the most frequently cited authors
and their works; to prepare for a research assistantship or
other academic position; to better understand today's
competitive market, and more.
EISA-2
can help you in several ways using:
- Big
picture (visual)
- ATEIS-Start
showing how to move through information space
- ATEIS-Sources
about
bibliographic sources
showing
connections between primary and secondary sources. For
example, to identify reports (example of primary
literature), you will first use secondary sources
(e.g., Compendex, Inspec) that index and abstract
technical reports, conferences, and
others.
-
ATEIS-Books
showing main sources for books; and
-
ATEIS-Articles
with main sources for articles
- Tutorials
with examples from printed and Web sources of engineering
literature
- Quick
WWW access panels with URLs to main engineering and
science sources on the
Web.
Apply
concepts
Access
sources using a layered approach
- Basic
stock of engineering literature that every engineer
should know (vs disipline-specific). EISA2 currently
gives access to the basic stock.
- Publication
life cycle: an idea may be expressed in many different
manifestations (e.g., an idea that would result in one's
dissertation, may be expressed as an abstract, digest,
proposal for funding, presentation at a seminar,
conference paper, annotated demo, technical report,
journal article, published monograph)
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Learn
about library
catalogs
and catalog
portals
- What
they are, their contents, when and how to use them (see
the ATEIS-Books
visual)
- Difference
between library catalogs and union catalogs
- What
do you get when you search library catalogs
- Difference
between library catalogs and magazine databases and when
to use each
- Access
to catalogs
Learn
about magazine databases
- Purpose,
use, and distinction from other access mechanisms (see
the ATEIS-Articles
visual)
- Access
to magazine databases
- Informal
channels of publication versus formal
channels
- Publication
life cycle
- Primary
engineering sources (e.g., technical report, conference
paper, journal article)
- Search
strategy and modification
- Mechanisms
that lead to different types of information sources
(e.g., factual, bibliographic, citation
indexes)
EISA-2
interleaves sources and instructions on how to use the
sources. Examples are given as well as search templates. We
believe that to become an effective user of numerous
sources, you need to understand structures of these sources
and tools. We explain many important concepts in the
introductory paragraphs.
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