Kresge Engineering Library

Kresge Engineering Library News
Number 17, December 2005
Jean McKenzie, Editor.

  1. New Resources
  2. Changes to Resources
  3. Services
  4. Interesting Reading
  5. eReference and Recommendations for Purchase

All Issues

1. New Resources

Materials Research Society Symposia Proceedings
UCB faculty, staff, and students now have access to over 14,000 peer-reviewed papers from MRS meetings from 2000 to the present via the MRS Proceedings Library. An increasing number of these proceedings are only available online. When you locate a reference from a MRS Symposia Proceedings in Compendex, INSPEC, or another engineering database, go directly to the MRS Online Proceedings Library to find the paper. Eventually, you will be able to link to the appropriate online proceedings volume through Melvyl, but these links are not yet in place. For now, going directly to the MRS Online Proceedings Library is most efficient.

CINDAS databases
The Library now has access to two new materials properties databases from CINDAS (the Center for Information and Numerical Data Analysis and Synthesis at Purdue University). The Thermophysical Properties of Matter Database (TPMD) provides thermophysical properties of over 5,000 materials in over 50,000 data curves. The Microelectronics Packaging Materials Database (MPMD) contains data on the thermal, mechanical, electrical, and physical properties of over 750 electronics packaging materials. Both of these databases include dynamic graphing capabilities, allowing users to compare the same property of multiple materials, change scale ranges, and export data. The databases are continually updated and expanded. First time users are strongly encouraged to view the tutorials to learn the full capabilities of these data sources.

We will be evaluating these databases in the future to determine whether or not to continue subscribing, so please send me any feedback you have on these products.

New Electronic Journals Database
The Engineering Library recently started using a new Electronic Journals database, powered by UC-eLinks. The new database offers several improvements over the previous version:

Encyclopedia of Materials
Users of this online encyclopedia may have noticed that we temporarily lost access. Access has now been restored; we apologize for the inconvenience.

2. Changes to Resources

Safari Tech Books Online: Our subscription now includes all O'Reilly computer manuals published from 2003-2005, plus newly released titles as they are added to Safari.

SciFinder Scholar 2006: Searchers of SciFinder Scholar (Chemical Abstracts) on PCs need to upgrade to the 2006 software by March 31, 2006, as older versions will no longer be supported after that date.

3. Services

Increased Electrical Access: In order to facilitate laptop use in the Engineering Library, new electrical outlets were installed under the large study tables in the library as well as in most of the study carrels. The Library also has AirBears access. The Berkeley Engineering Fund provided the funds to make this improvement possible. Engineering students have been giving the new outlets a heavy workout this semester!

UC-eLinks Citation Linker: This is a quick way to link to the full text of a journal article from a known citation. The journal title (or ISSN) and date are required. Fill in volume, issue and page numbers to go directly to the article.

USB Flash Drives Now Supported: USB flash drives may be used now on all of our public PC workstations to save files from the Internet. You can still use 3.5" floppy disks as well; however, we no longer have Zip drives.

Course Reserves: Reserve materials for all College of Engineering courses are held at the Engineering Library, and faculty will receive a call letter soon requesting their lists for Spring 2006 courses.

Librarians: Please contact your librarian if you have recommendations for purchase, if you would like library research instruction for your group or class, or if you have other questions about library materials or services. Our contact information and departments each of us handles are below:

4. Interesting Reading

The November issue of Computer includes an article by Bob Colwell on Books Engineers Should Read. As he states in the article, "Some of these books offer wisdom on how to think about the task of engineering, others focus on the boundary between the designer's world and the real world with human users, and some have helped inform my personal worldview in a way that I think has made me a better engineer." Almost all of these books are available in our campus libraries, so you can search Melvyl to find the call numbers and location. Some highlights include:

Henry Petroski, To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design (St. Martins Press, 1985).
TA174.P474 1985 Engineering Library

James Chiles, Inviting Disaster: Lessons from the Edge of Technology (HarperBusiness, 2001).
T174.5.C57 2001 Engineering Library

Tom Kelley, The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, Americas Leading Design Firm (Currency/Doubleday, 2001).
HD53.K454 2001 Environmental Design Library

Donald Norman, The Invisible Computer (MIT Press, 1998).
QA76.5.N665 1998 Engineering Library

Clayton Christensen, The Innovators Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Harvard Business School Press, 1997).
HD53.C49 1997 Business & Economics Library

5. eReference and Recommendations for Purchase

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