Welcome
This guide will help you understand what Library resources are available for you while you work on your Engineering Senior Design Thesis. There will be a mix of interactive slides and links for you to explore.
Profile
Finding Sources
The links below lead you to two database that the SCU Library subscribes to. They are major engineering-related databases.
Engineering Village is what's called a Citation Index - this means that you usually cannot find full text of the articles in the database. Usually, you can click on Find it @ SCU to actually get the full text of the article. If this doesn't work, you can also search for the full title of the article in our OneSearch box on the library homepage.
IEEE Xplore is a full-text database - this means you should be able to find the full text of the articles that you find in the database. However, there might be cases where the full-text isn't available - the Find it @ SCU button will be there to connect you to the full text.
On both of these databases, their results page (what shows up after you've done a search) give you options for how to refine the results - sometimes they have dates that you can filter by, sometimes they have controlled vocabulary so that you can be more precise in what you are looking for. Each database does this differently.
One important skill you should have when working with new interfaces such as these databases is the ability to quickly scan a page to look for the most important features. For example, a quick scan can show you where the refine results column is, where the actions such as Share or Cite are located, etc.
- Engineering Village This link opens in a new windowThis database provides access to a vast collection of abstracts to scientific literature, conference proceedings, technical reports, and patents covering all engineering disciplines. It combines the results from both Compendex and Inspec.
- IEEE Xplore This link opens in a new windowThis database provides full-text access to a collection of research papers, conference proceedings, and technical standards in engineering and technology, with diverse topics including electrical engineering, computer science, electronics, and telecommunications.
The links below lead to resources outside of the Library. They are useful for finding related articles to help expand your pool of sources.
Here are a few resources to help you get started with using these tools:
Research Rabbit
Semantic Scholar
- Semantic ScholarHelping Scholars Discover New Insights
Semantic Scholar provides free, AI-driven search and discovery tools, and open resources for the global research community.
We index over 200 million academic papers sourced from publisher partnerships, data providers, and web crawls.
- https://www.semanticscholar.org/about - ResearchRabbitWhat if we built a platform that empowers every step of your research?
We’re starting with our Discovery app which unlocks a completely novel way to search for papers and authors, monitor new literature, visualize research landscapes, and collaborate with colleagues.
- https://www.researchrabbit.ai/mission