Library Guides: Engineering Research Skills Guide: Internet, standards, and news and media

Searching beyond the library

Searching beyond library resources, like using the internet or finding standards, industry guidelines and statistics, can involve different search strategies.

Internet searching

Searching the Internet can be a great place to search, but it can be overwhelming, and you need to be sure you're using the best sources. It's particularly useful for finding council engineering guidelines, community profiles and demographics, product specifications, and information from government and industry sources.

Learn how to search the Internet effectively:

Finding standards

If you don’t know the standard you need:

Check if it’s been mentioned in your provided readings or other resources you’ve found
Try a quick Google search

When you have the standard number and/or name, use Standards Online to access Australian Standards.

Standards Online
This database provides full-text access to all Australian Standards, plus abstracts and contents information for other international standards such as ISO, IEC, EN, ETSI, NSAI, and JSA.
You can view standards online, print, or save to PDF. Online viewing is limited to 3 users at a time.

You can search the collection by title, number, keyword, scope, or publication dates. You can limit your search to Australian Standards only, or search all the Standards databases.

You can view online, print, or save as a PDF. Online viewing is limited to 3 users at a time.

You will need to have a PDF reader on your device in order to download and read Standards offline. When you click on the Download button, you will see instructions for downloading a standard. We suggest that you follow these instructions and then ensuring that you open the standard from the file folder and NOT in your browser.

Downloaded files will be watermarked with your email address, there are limited print options and restrictions on sharing and copy/pasting. More information can be found on the DRM Explained page and in the FAQs.

Standards Online search tips:

Search with the standard number only. Don't include the prefix and year/date
Check the status column to make sure it’s current

Using Standards Online

Standards Online isn't your only option. Remember to check relevant state government websites. See the Engineering Library Resource Guide, and your subject content for guidance and recommendations.

News and media

News and media databases can be useful for exploring public responses to engineering projects, understanding community perspectives, and tracking industry developments. I recommend trying the following databases:

Factiva
A global news and business information service, with most material available in full-text. It covers science, health, education, the humanities, and other subjects but has a focus on business, including business news, and company and industry research.

Factiva is produced by Dow Jones, a leading global provider of economic and financial information.

The database has full-text content from newspapers, newswires, business journals, market research reports, analyst reports, and websites.

It includes material from :
* Australian newspapers, including The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, and Business Review Weekly
* US newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal
* Magazines, journals and trade publications, including Forbes and Newsweek
* Newswires, including AFP, Reuters, and Dow Jones
* company reports
* other content including TV and radio podcasts; and major news and business information websites, blogs and message boards.

Coverage varies but goes back as far as 1980.

There is a useful online Help Guide available from ProQuest. It includes help pages on Simple Search, Search Builder (Charles Sturt's subscription defaults to Search Builder), Results pages, Companies/Markets, and Sample Searches.

NOTE: Charles Sturt Library has only 3 concurrent-user licences to Factiva. If you can't get access, try again later.
ANZ Newsstream
A ProQuest database featuring the full-text of Australian and New Zealand newspapers. Previously called ANZ Newsstand

This database includes titles from Fairfax (including The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald) and News Ltd (including The Australian, The Adelaide Advertiser, and The Herald Sun), plus leading regional and local newspaper titles from Australia and New Zealand, and transcripts and wire feeds from ABC programs.

Coverage varies, but most newspaper content is available from the mid- to late-nineties.

Other databases with online full-text newspaper content are Trove, Factiva, and Newspaper Source Plus.
Newspaper Source Plus
A database of full-text newspaper articles and news transcripts from a range of sources, mainly in the U.S., but including The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

This database features more than 1200 full-text newspapers, and includes more than 86 million full-text articles, plus more than 2 million television and radio news transcripts.

The newspapers covered include the New York Times (from January 1985 to present), Christian Science Monitor, Irish Times (Ireland), San Francisco Chronicle, The Times (UK), Toronto Star, USA Today, The Washington Post, and The Washington Times, while tv and radio sources include ABC News (American Broadcasting Company), CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), CBS News, CNBC, CNN, CNN International, FOX News, MSNBC, National Public Radio, and PBS.

The database is mainly American in focus, but does include some international material (as listed above), and some Australian material, including The Sydney Morning Herald, and news transcripts from the (Australian) ABC.

For a more comprehensive source of Australian and New Zealand newspaper articles, please see ANZ Newsstream.
TVNews
An Informit database of Australian free-to-air television news, current affairs, and (selected) documentary programs, available as digitised video. The link here will take you to the Informit platform with TVNews selected.

This database provides video from television news and current affairs programs, and selected documentaries, from the Australian free-to-air networks. All individual stories from a particular broadcast are indexed and have detailed summaries. TVNews is updated daily, with stories from an evening news broadcast generally being available the next morning.

The video for each story or documentary is available in WMV format as a progressive download, allowing viewing to begin before the total video file is transferred. Items range in duration from less than 30 seconds for short news stories, to more than 60 minutes for selected documentaries. Transcripts are NOT included.

Your searching from this link will be within the TVNews database only. You can change the database(s) you are searching using the Change Databases button. Unless you have changed databases, you will continue to search in TVNews. When you have run a search, your results list will include, at the top, which database(s) you have searched in.

You can use Simple Search or Advanced Search. Advanced Search offers more options for searching, and more limiters. When you have run a search, there are further options for filtering your results. For searching help, there is a useful set of Search Tips at the bottom of the Advanced Search Screen.

Coverage is from August 2007- present.