A Guide to Engineering Resources

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.

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

GenAI can help you:

• Identify relevant engineering standard numbers based on design prompt inputs.
• Summarize standards and standard requirements.
• Identify possible "experts."
• Find and summarize codes.

Best Practices for using GenAI to find standards: 

• 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 exist.
  • A simple "Google" search of the standard number will help you know whether that standard is real.
  • If you copy/paste AI-generated text, you could plagiarize without knowing it.

Citations

1. Hargadon, Steve. "Library 2.0's ChatGPT Bootcamp for Libraries and Librarians." Library 2.0, 3/25/2023, https://www.library20.com/bootcamps/chatgpt.
2. 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