Research Guides: Mechanical Engineering Design: Home

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How to Request Individual Standards

You MUST request individual standards for purchase.

If you need a standard, email the standard number (e.g. ASTM-F3502-21) to Lauren Todd. You can also email her for help identifying relevant standards.

About Standards, Codes & Patents

Standards

Documentation of engineering practices including rules, techniques, and conditions for engineering design, industrial practices, units of measurement, terminology, etc.
Committees, affiliated with societies or organizations, and made up of specialists from universities and industry write standards.
Give guidance and authority to engineering design.
Can be mandatory or voluntary.
Rules for uniformity, size, quality, performance, shape, definition, and testing methodology of manufactured products.

Codes

set mandatory legal requirements.
Clarifies what needs to be done

Patents

"type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention." Wikipedia

Relevant Databases to find Standards

AccessEngineering
Find codes and standards summaries
Engineering Village (1970 - )
Use this database to find standard item records. This is NOT full-text, but you can easily search for standards and email the engineering librarian with the standard number to order.
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Xplore
Search and access IEEE and IET journals, IEEE and IET conference proceedings, and IEEE standards.
Scopus
The world’s largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Contains over 46 million records, 70% with abstracts, and also includes over 4.6 million conference papers. NOTE: Click "Institutions" icon in right corner. Change organization to Washington University in St Louis John M Olin Library, Danforth Campus.
Web of Science (1900 - )
Science, social science, arts, and humanities citations for scholarly literature.

Links to Search Standards, Codes & Patents

ANSI Standards Store
American National Standards Institute
ASME Standards Search
American Society of Mechanical Engineers
ASTM Standards Store
American Society for Testing and Materials, now known as ASTM International
Code of Federal Regulations
Lists all governmental regulations adopted in the United States
Consumer Product Safety Division
CPSC works to save lives and keep families safe by reducing the unreasonable risk of injuries and deaths associated with consumer products and fulfilling its vision to be the recognized global leader in consumer product safety
Google Patents
Search and read the full text of patents from around the world.
Accuris Global Standards Store
Search standards here and email librarian for purchase via libraries deposit account.
ISO Standards Catalogue
International Organization for Standardization
National Institute of Technology (NIST)
This database provides information on standards that have been cited or incorporated by reference into the US Code of Federal Regulations (CFR).
Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) Standards
OSHA's mission is to ensure that employees work in a safe and healthful environment by setting and enforcing standards, and by providing training, outreach, education and assistance. Employers must comply with all applicable OSHA standards.
Purdue University: Standards are everyhwere
Welcome to the Standards are Everywhere: An Information Literacy Approach to Standards Education Project
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
More than 18,000 FDA employees work in all 50 states and internationally to ensure the safety and effectiveness of human and veterinary medicines, biologics, and medical devices. We also regulate the safety of food, cosmetics, devices that emit radiation, and tobacco products.

How to use GenAI Responsibly as a Research Tool

GenAI can help you:

Identify relevant engineering standard numbers based on design prompt inputs.
Summarize standards and standard requirements.
Brainstorm keywords, subject headings, and additional research areas.
Identify possible "experts."
Help outline your report.
Remember to fact-check all information generated as it could be wrong, outdated, or fabricated.

Best Practices for using GenAI as a research or writing tool:

Start creative juices and overcome writer's block.
- Generate topics, keywords, and ideas.
- Help outline papers.
- Compare and contrast
- Refine research questions and thesis.
- Note effective prompts and strategies.
Engineer your prompts to interact and converse with the GenAi.
- Be very specific with your language inputs.
- Consider the target audience and task.
- Refine your questions and responses-- it may take a couple back-and-forth questions and clarification to land on useful information.
- Fact-check everything. Then cite that other source.
Beware of misinformation, programming bias, and hallucinations.
- GenAI will fake articles, standards, and citations.
- The free version of ChatGPT has limited knowledge of the world or events after 2021.
- Gemini will hallucinate the perfect standard --- that might not actually exist.
- If you copy/paste AI-generated text, you could plagiarize without knowing it.

Citations

Hargadon, Steve. "Library 2.0's ChatGPT Bootcamp for Libraries and Librarians." Library 2.0, 3/25/2023, https://www.library20.com/bootcamps/chatgpt.
Hood, Sarah. "Using Generative AI Responsibly for Brainstorming and Refining a Research Question." ACRL Framework for Information Literacy Sandbox. https://sandbox.acrl.org/resources/using-generative-ai-responsibly-brainstorming-and-refining-research-question-0