HST 318: History of Engineering (Poly campus)
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Notes on the names of your projects
Use the name of the structure or invention given in the assignment sheet or approved topic. You may need to add a culture or location to be more specific -- "Roman aqueducts"; India AND "step wells"; Spain AND acequias; Maya AND "water filtration".
When you search, be sure to enclose any multiword phrase in double quotes (" ") to keep the words together -- "Nazca lines"; "Nazca aqueducts"; "living bridges".
Please keep in mind that historically, the knowledge of how to make these items was a tradition passed down orally. We can only surmise and hypothesize as an outside culture looking back. Our methods are too perfectly controlled, plus we cannot be sure about the impurities of the source materials that contributed to the strength/durability of the device/structure. There are some cultures who are still building/making their inventions. They are not necessarily sharing their master engineering techniques, since some of them are considered "trade secrets."
Resources on historical or cultural context is better found in the history databases than the engineering databases. The engineering of ancient structures and inventions are often covered in the engineering databases.
Background sources you cannot cite
You may use these encyclopedias to find background information, dates, and other possible sources, but you cannot cite these in your paper.
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Britannica AcademicIncludes the complete encyclopedia, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, world atlas, timelines, "This Day in History," and world data analysis, with articles, illustrations, definitions, and curated links reviewed by Britannica editors.
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WikipediaThe strength of this crowd-sourced encyclopedia is the bibliography at the end of the articles.
Checking for Peer-Review Journals
In some of our databases in Engineering and other areas, the database does not allow you to check an option for only peer-reviewed journal articles. To find out if a journal is peer-reviewed, you have two options:
1. Go to the journal publisher's web site to read their sections: "Advice to Authors"; "About this Journal." These are the most likely places that state if articles are sent out for peer-review.
2. Check Ulrichsweb (see below) to see if there is a little referee shirt icon in the left hand column. Search by journal name.
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UlrichswebUnlimited Database of in-depth information about more than 300,000 periodicals/serials of all types: scholarly journals, e-journals, peer-reviewed titles, magazines, newsletters and newspapers. Entries provide ISSN, publisher, language, subject, abstracting & indexing coverage, full-text database coverage, and reviews written by librarians.
If you need more help discovering the peer-review status, please contact a librarian.
Remember, only your professor can tell you if an article is acceptable for your assignment.