Guide to Information Sources in Engineering

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	Issues in Science and Technology   Librarianship
	Fall 2000

	DOI:10.5062/F4ST7MSX



      

    Book Reviews
    Guide to Information Sources in   Engineering
      Brian Quigley
  Electronic Outreach Librarian
  Kresge Engineering Library
  University of California, Berkeley
bquigley@library.berkeley.edu        


     

  Guide to Information Sources in Engineering. Charles R. Lord.  Englewood, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, 2000. 345 pp., $75.00 (ISBN   1-56308-699-9)   

    Charles Lord once served as the Engineering Librarian for the University  of Washington, Seattle where he was named the Ei/SLA Engineering Librarian  of the Year in 1997. Since that time, he has moved to the Tacoma campus to  serve as its library director. In light of these credentials, sci-tech  librarians must have high expectations for this guide written for  engineers, librarians and other information professionals. Lord certainly  delivers a useful and dependable guide but not one that meets  expectations. 

    Lord opens his guide with an informative but misleadingly titled chapter  on "How Engineers Use Information," in which he discusses the creation of  engineering information and its relationship to engineers before actually  addressing the subject of the chapter within the next-to-last paragraph.  He then takes the reader on a tour of engineering information sources  (most published since 1996), stopping along the way to delineate specific  resource types within eleven broadly defined chapters. Lord concludes with  an appendix listing scholarly publishers and their web addresses followed  by a lengthy though hardly comprehensive index.

    Having grown accustomed to literature guides arranged by subject (such as  the Encyclopedia of Physical Sciences and Engineering Information  Sources and Hunt's Information Sources in Science and  Technology), I initially balked at the choice of resource type as  the primary organizational device.  However, the wealth of resources  belonging to multiple subject areas eventually led me to appreciate this  style. By subdividing some chapters by subject area, Lord increases the  utility of those chapters, but the obvious lack of consistency in these  subjects simply baffles me. For example, bioengineering appears as a  subject division within the chapters on scholarly journals and  professional organizations, but not within the chapters on handbooks and  Internet resources. Does this mean that no useful handbooks and web sites  in bioengineering exist? These inconsistencies and exclusions certainly  have an effect on the quality of the book.

    For those resources that Lord does include, he provides basic  bibliographic and price information, as well as descriptive though rarely  evaluative annotations.  Although all very interesting, some of these  inclusions approach a level of specificity that Lord cannot maintain  throughout the volume. Should a work that does not list even one  bioengineering handbook include a directory of Pacific Northwest computer  companies (Northwest High Tech on the Web)? This  inconsistency notwithstanding, Lord does inform us of many valuable  resources that we would probably not encounter otherwise.

    Clearly, the interdisciplinary nature of engineering research complicates  the task of assigning information sources to specific categories. Even so,  Lord limits each resource to a single category, presumably in an attempt  to save space. This limitation makes the index absolutely essential for  locating sources.  Unfortunately, although the index is quite lengthy, it  is not as comprehensive as it needs to be. Often, resources can not be  easily found under specific terms.

     For all the questionable choices throughout his guide, Lord succeeds when  it comes to Internet resources. He includes more of them than did previous  guides in the field, and he incorporates them throughout to a degree not  previously achieved in those guides. By including web resources in the  appropriate chapters, Lord helps raise the digital format to the level of  the print resource.

    Although flawed, this guide does serve as an informative and necessary  update to previous guides in the field. Building upon those guides rather  than duplicating them, Lord calls our attention to a variety of current  resources -- some familiar, some obscure; some essential, some esoteric;  some print, some electronic.  Certainly, professionals will occasionally  become frustrated with this guide's organization and indexing.  Nevertheless, they will often be rewarded for their efforts. I recommend  this book as an essential addition to any reference collection that serves  engineering professionals and researchers, especially in academic and  special settings.

      

  

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