1. Library Resources for
Mechanical Systems Engineering

2. I AM . . .
Melanie Parlette
LRC Program Liaison for
School of Engineering and Information Technology
mparlette@conestogac.on.ca

3. TODAY we will…
• Locate the LRC website and identify the most
relevant components of the site as emphasized
during the session
• List and explain the criteria one can use to evaluate
resources to ensure they are of good quality.
• Perform a search in the Library’s Discovery Service
and narrow that search and create a list of results.

4. Off-Campus Access
PIN NUMBERS - You can use your PIN to:
• Access resources from Off-Campus
• Renew a book, place a hold
• Review your account

5. LRC Homepage  Research Help  Engineering  Mechanical Engineering
YOUR Research Guide
http://bit.ly/MSE
Key Tabs:
•Articles from Databases
•Books . . .
•Cite Your Sources
•Contact Us

6. Today’s Research
Topic is….
• Is there a relationship
Facebook use and
academic performance?

7. Finding A Source to
Answer Your Question
• Where do we begin?
• Google
• Wikipedia
• Other suggestions…

12. Types of Sources
What’s the Difference?
Scholarly Journals Popular Magazines Trade Journals Conference Papers Technical Reports
• Scholarly research or • General interest • Industry related • Author is scholar in • Author is often a
projects. articles, information, news and field, academic or scholar or a scientist,
• Illustrations are entertainment, or trends. Some researcher engineer, government
usually charts and information aimed at illustrations. • Conference papers contractor, or
graphs. the consumer. • Authors are industry tend to be more technical personnel.
• Authors are Usually colour experts, recent than journal • Published by a
authorities in their photographs and professionals, or articles, but may be corporation or
field. Often professors illustrations. practitioners who are considered less educational institution
or researchers. • Articles are usually not always identified authoritative • Reputation is
• Peer review process written by magazine • Typically no peer depending on the everything
is in place where the staff, freelance review or refereeing review and • Typically not peer
content of an article is writers, or may be process. acceptance process reviewed
reviewed by one or anonymous. • Peer Review Process Example:
more experts in the • No peer review or Examples: may or may not be Design and Fabrication
field. refereeing process. ASME Mechanical rigorous of a Tank-Applied
Engineering Broad Area Cooling
Examples: Examples: Magazine Example: Shield Coupon
IEEE/ASME Wired, Popular Proceedings of ASME
transactions on Mechanics Heat Transfer
mechatronics Division

13. What is Peer
•
Review?
When an author submits his or her research article to a scholarly journal, an
editor will review it to see if it meets the criteria of that journal. If it does, the
editor will send the article out for Peer Review.
[Peer Review is the process where other experts in the field will
thoroughly review and evaluate the article and the research that was
done. They check for accuracy of the information presented, validity
and repeatability of the research, quality and appropriateness for the
journal.]
• Based on the feedback from the experts (i.e. “peers”), the author’s
submission will be accepted, rejected or accepted with revisions. It is
uncommon to accept a paper with no revisions. In most cases an author will
need to make some changes before final publication.
Source: Simon Fraser University

14. Academic Publishing Process
A researcher The researcher The editor reviews it
carries out submits their and sends it out to
research paper to a multiple experts for
journal. peer review
Sometimes the
article might be
Open Access is
outright rejected
revolutionizing
this process.
People engage
People
with the
comment
findings of the
on the
article through
article
social media
through
letters to
The reviewers
the editor examine the article.
Other
researchers
incorporate the
findings in their This process may be
research repeated until the
article meets the
standards of the
reviewers.
The publisher The researcher
and experts makes some
The paper edits.
is review the
published paper.
in the
journal

15. Choosing Better Sources
• How can you tell trustworthy information (the “better” information) from
less-trustworthy information (“worse” information)?
The CARS Test
• Credibility Look for believable, well written information that is free
of bias. Locate information about the author(s) and their credentials. How
credible are the authors, what is their level of expertise on this particular
topic.
• Accuracy The information should be up-to-date, clear. You can confirm
accuracy by locating information from a variety of sources. Look for a last
updated date.
• Reasonableness Information should be present objective and
balanced arguments.
• Support Other sources should support the information found. Always
look for a reference list, bibliography or citations demonstrating where the
information came from.

16. Let’s begin our
search…

17. Searching
Tips:
•Select “Full Text”
•Narrow by Date
•Determine appropriate
source type
•Consider narrowing by
subject

18. What do I search
for?
Automation
Aerodynamics
Systems
Design
Accuracy and Mechanical
Fluid
Precision Engineering Mechanics
Electronics
Materials Heat
Transfer

19. Searching A Database. . .
* (the asterisk wildcard)
As the name implies, * can be substituted for any number of letters. This is particularly useful to include
all words with a certain term and any suffix after it. Simply apply the asterisk to the end of a term and it
will return all documents containing that term, followed by anything. For example: biostatistic* will find
biostatistician or biostatistics or biostatistical

20. Searching A Database. . .
Quotation Marks: " "
Enclose specific phrases in quotation marks. This will direct the search engine to
search the database for documents containing that exact phrase. A search for
analytical chemist (without quotes) will return any document containing analytical
and chemist with anything in between. If you place quotes around the phrase,
searching for “facility management“ it will only documents with facility and
management right beside each other.

21. WHAT IS GOOGLE
SCHOLAR?
A search interface for locating citations to academic
research—and accessing the full-text online (sometimes).
This is the definition of any research database.
Google Scholar is just one more in a host of research tools
similar to those offered by the library (but using it is free to
all).
Reading articles found in it is not free (not always, anyway).

22. What can you search
using google
scholar?books, abstracts and court opinions,
“…articles, theses,
from academic publishers, professional societies, online
repositories, universities and other web sites.”
•Some resources are “open access,” i.e. free
•Many have a cost-per-article
•The LRC can help improve access to the costly articles
(but more on that later)
Google. (2011). About Google Scholar. Retrieved from http://scholar.google.ca/intl/en/scholar/about.html

23. What can’t you find
using google
scholar?
• Google doesn’t search everything, and neither does
Google Scholar
• Only searches “scholarly” sources
• So it does not search the following resources:
• Newspapers
• Trade Magazines
• Professional Magazines
• General Interest Magazines

24. Google ≠ Good
• What exactly is included? We don’t know and Google
won’t say.
• Calls into question content providers, i.e. how does Google
define “scholarly”?
• Good for “casual” research, but not acceptable as a
single source for coverage of the literature on a topic.
• Coverage is unknown
• Relevancy Ranking of search results is questionable
• Narrowing/sorting search results is rudimentary
• No controlled vocabulary
• Citations may be inaccurate due to reliance of web
crawling extraction (e.g. Author Name: P Login)
Jacsó, P. Google Scholar's ghost authors. Library Journal 134: 26-27.

25. Linking to LRC
resources
• Go to Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.ca)
• Click “Scholar Preferences” in upper right hand of the
search page.
• On the Scholar Preferences page, in the “Library Links”
section, enter for “Conestoga” in the search box and click
“Find Library”.
• Checkboxes appear below the search box.
• Checkmark the Conestoga links.
• Scroll to the bottom of the page and click “Save
Preferences.”
• Your searches will now show links to Conestoga LRC
resources that contain articles from your search results.

26. Today We…
• Located key sections of the LRC’s website
• Practiced evaluating resources to ensure they were
of good quality
• Performed a basic search of LRC resources,
narrowed our search and created a list of relevant
results

27. HELP AT THE A1109
LIBRARY
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