UCI Libraries Update, Volume 25, Number 2, Winter 2007

Knovel Engineering and Technology Reference Works Online

The UCI community now has access to the Knovel database of engineering and technology handbooks and reference works. The database contains more than 1,000 titles from numerous publishers for an array of engineering disciplines, including aerospace, biochemistry and biotechnology, chemical, civil, electrical and electronics, environmental, and mechanical engineering, metals, and others.

Between Knovel (available at www.knovel.com), EnvironetBase, EngNetBase, and ChemNetBase, the Libraries now provide access to more than 1,300 handbooks and engineering references online. You can access Knovel from the Engineering and Chemistry subject guides. The ANTPAC record for each title provides a direct link to the full text online.

But Knovel is more than just electronic books. Users can perform keyword and/or data searches, and the new chemical structure feature permits you to draw the chemical compound before searching. A sophisticated search engine immediately returns what a user needs to see, using text, data, text and data, or data ranges, with results normalized, ranked, and oriented to keep the researcher on track. Users can navigate page-by-page or search across the site and manipulate interactive tables, graphs, equations, spreadsheets, and other structured information.

Engineers and scientists live in a world of data. In order to satisfy their real need to use and manipulate the data found in table, many tables in the e-books are “interactive deeply searchable” (IDS). Embedded right in the PDF document and identified by a red box, an IDS Table is "live," with the look and feel of a spreadsheet. This permits you to sort columns, cut and paste, or create custom tables that include only those compounds of specific interest. Knovel also features IDS graphs and interactive equations with plots, which allow users to enter real ‘x’ and ‘y’ values to go with the graphics.

For more information, please contact Mitchell Brown, Research Librarian for Chemistry and Earth System Science (mcbrown@uci.edu or x49732).

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