Research Guides by Subject

The ASTM Standards and Engineering Digital Library (SEDL) is a vast online downloadable collection of industry-leading standards and technical engineering information which is now available at Northeastern University Libraries. It covers a broad range of engineering disciplines, including aerospace, biomedical, chemical, civil, environmental, geological, health and safety, industrial, materials science, mechanical, nuclear, petroleum, soil science, and solar engineering.

The SEDL includes all current ASTM standards! Get on-demand access to these, as well as technical papers, chapters, and books. SEDL content includes:

• 13,000+ ASTM standards
• 1,400+ books
• 15,000+ journal articles
• 47,000+ total papers, chapters, and articles

Users can access ASTM’s 13,000 standards in more than 130 industry areas as well as more than 40-year collections of special technical publications (STPs), manuals, monographs, data series, and journals. Content is updated twice weekly.

STPs cover ferrous and non-ferrous metals, materials testing, building codes, construction, geoenvironmental, geotechnical, paints and coatings, petroleum products and lubricants, plastics, rubber, textiles, water, safety, consumer-product testing, and packaging and labeling.

Examples of full text manuals/monographs/data series:

Business Performance Excellence through Total Quality Management – 2nd Edition
Pekar Jack. 2009.
Intensive Quenching Systems: Engineering and Design  – Kobasko N., Aronov M., Powell J., Totten G. 2010
Standard Specification for Total Knee Prosthesis. 2010
Manual on Presentation of Data and Control Chart Analysis- 8th Edition  Neubauer, Dean 2010
Moisture Control in Buildings: The Key Factor in Mold Prevention—2nd Edition
Trechsel Heinz, Bomberg Mark.  2009.

Help is available from the link at the left of each screen. An additional link to Search Tips is also included on some search screens.

A powerful film about women will be televised on the OWN network at 9pm tonight.

The film Miss Representation “explores women’s under-representation in positions of power by challenging their limited and often disparaging portrayals in the media,” according to the description from the OWN Documentary Club web site. Appearing in the film are such notables as Condoleezza Rice, Nancy Pelosi, Katie Couric, Rachel Maddow, Margaret Cho, Rosario Dawson, and Gloria Steinem. See a preview: Miss Representation trailer

If you miss the broadcast, Miss Representation is also available at Snell Library (currently checked out, but you can “place a hold” and be notified when it becomes available).

Northeastern University Professor of History William Fowler was featured on NPR yesterday to answer questions about Christopher Columbus’ momentous journey to the ‘New World’ and to bust common myths that people associate with it. The interview covered everything from Columbus’ faulty expectations for the trip to the real names of the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. The full conversation can be read or listened to here.

To bust more myths about Christopher Columbus for yourself, try searching Northeastern’s Library Catalog (NUCAT) for books on Christopher Columbus.

An article on a revision of the US Government’s socio-economic index, published in 1982 in the journal, Social Science Research, has been cited by other articles in a broad array of academic journals over 300 times, with the most recent citation being from an article published in June 2011. By extending our offering of Web of Science back files from 1975 through 1992, we are able to provide Northeastern researchers with these historical statistics, allowing them to identify the most important articles, journals, institutions, and authors in their field or subject area of study.

When viewing any article in the Web of Science database, a list of citations from that article are provided as well as a list of other subsequent articles and conference proceedings that cite the original article. Links connect to the full text of the cited articles when the full text is available. And don’t be fooled by the title of this database.  As the above example illustrates, Web of Science covers scholarly articles in all types of sciences that include journals in the humanities and social sciences.

Visit our News & Events page to read more about this collection or visit our full listing of online databases and trials.

Did you know you can easily find out about research at Northeastern that’s being funded by the National Institutes of Health? The NIH RePORTER is “an electronic tool that allows users to search a repository of NIH-funded research projects and access publications and patents resulting from NIH funding.” It’s a component of NIH’s RePORT service (Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools), and it “satisfies a legislative mandate included in the NIH Reform Act of 2006 to provide the public with an electronic system to search NIH research projects using a variety of codes, including public health area of interest, and provide information on publications and patents resulting from NIH-funded research.”

RePORTER shows that there are currently 96 active projects at Northeastern being funded by the NIH, from award years 2009 through 2011:

Since 1987, Northeastern University researchers have worked on 1,023 NIH-funded projects:

NIH RePORTER gives details of each funded project, including the award amount, the principal investigator(s), the project abstract and keywords, and any related projects or subprojects. It links each project to its published results in PubMedCentral as well as any related patents. As well as being able to search by institution, you can also search by investigator name, topic, geographic location, and specific funding agency, institute or center within NIH. If you create a free account you can receive weekly e-mailed alerts on your saved search queries (RSS is not yet available, but I hope it will be soon.) I highly recommend this resource for anyone who wants to learn more about health sciences research being conducted at Northeastern.