Library:Research Skills For Engineering Students/Module 05/Page 13

Compendex and Web of Science are good databases to use in your engineering research, but there are other databases that may hold specialized information. Eventually, you will become familiar with the databases for your area of study, and you can search for them directly though the Indexes and Databases tab on the UBC Library homepage.

If you don’t know which databases to use, UBC Library Research Guides can help! Research Guides provide recommended resources for each subject taught at UBC. They are a great place to start when you are new to a subject.

To access the UBC Library Research Guides, click the arrow beside Get Research Help on the top menu bar of the UBC Library homepage. Select Research Guides.

Here, you can browse all subjects taught at UBC. For example, we could expand the Engineering & Applied Science section to see all available guides. Alternatively, you can search for a subject within the Research Guides page.

On a research guide, you’ll see information about the subject librarian(s), who are research experts in specific subject areas. They are the best people to contact if you need help or have questions about any resources within the guide.

Key resources for the subject area will be found on the main page of the guide. Along the top of the guide, you’ll see a number of tabs that list different types of material. Click the Articles tab to see a list of recommended databases for your subject area. For example, in civil engineering, we can see that core databases are Compendex and Web of Science. There are other key databases for civil engineering, such as the ASCE Research Library.

There are many other specialized databases and helpful resources within each research guide. Explore the tabs and links within, and ask a librarian for help if needed!