Library Guides: Literature searching for science &amp; technology: Getting the material you need

Getting your material

Type of material - think about the resources you need to read to inform your project.

Include a number of articles from academic or professional journals, as well as a range of books. You can also use other resources such as:

Legislation - may cover areas such as security or data protection.
Standards and patents - these regulate sectors such as building and construction.
Maps and films
Government publications and grey literature - for example, company annual reports, theses and dissertations.
Data and statistics - these can be downloaded from business databases or Governmental websites.

Where to find the material you need

Peer reviewed journal articles can be found in databases such as Science Direct.
Legislation - search for this in the legal databases, Westlaw and Lexis.
Standards - BSI Online for UK and UK-adopted standards. ASTM for US standards.
Maps - Digimap for Ordnance Survey maps, plus marine and geological data.
Box of Broadcasts - TV and radio programmes.
Primary source news - Nexis and PressReader.
Company information - Business Source Ultimate, Nexis and Bloomberg. Marketline for market research and SWOT analysis.

For further information, see our other LibGuides for help in other specialist topics such as health and business.

ASTM Standards and Engineering Digital Library (SEDL)
ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) SEDL collection provides access to all 13,000 active ASTM Standards
Accessibility information for ASTM Standards and Engineering Digital Library (SEDL)
Also all 28,500 historical ASTM Standards 1,000 withdrawn ASTM Standards 12,300 Redlines, showing comparison between old and new versions of standards ASTM Journals, peer-reviewed articles, selected Technical Papers (STPs) in e-book format and digital videos of test methods.
Bloomberg
A global financial markets database providing news, analytics, real time pricing for millions of securities world-wide plus extensive historical pricing and stock charts.
Accessibility information for Bloomberg
Available on:

• 7 bookable terminals in the Financial Resources Zone, Business Library
• 10 non-bookable terminals in the Bloomberg Finance Lab, Bunhill Row
• 10 bookable terminals in the Financial Resources Suite, Northampton Square
Library

You can book a terminal in advance.

To take Bloomberg Certification in Market Concept or Environmental Social Governance, see Signing up for Bloomberg for Education.
Box of Broadcasts (BoB)
Box of Broadcasts (BOB) lets you view, record, create clips and share broadcast programmes from over 75 TV and radio channels. For educational use only.

Limitation - Full service available only to users located in the UK. BBC Parliament is temporarily available to users located anywhere in the world.
Accessibility information for Box of Broadcasts (BoB)
British Standards Online
BSOL provides access to British standards and international and European standards that have been adopted as British standards in the subjects of civil engineering, fluid mechanics, energy, etc.

Limitation - BSOL have recently implemented DRM that prevents downloaded files from being opened without a plug-in. Please use the 'Quick view' option to view standards while we implement a fix.

Accessibility information for British Standards Online
It also includes ASTM standards and ISO standards that haven't
been adopted as British standards. BSOL also holds BSI Publicly Available Specifications, as well as BSI books.The Eurocodes are a new set of European structural design codes for building and civil engineering works. They will be used for European public works and are set to become the de-facto standard for the private sector - both in Europe and worldwide.Please follow the link on the BSI homepage and click on BSOL subscribers in the yellow box on the right hand side of the page to access documents from the BSI construction module
Business Source Ultimate
Provides access to journal articles, case studies, company profiles, industry reports, SWOT Analysis, Working Papers & interviews with executives & analysts. Coverage is international with content including business & management, accounting & finance, HR management, marketing and economics. It also covers engineering, health, social studies, some business law and includes full text access to the Harvard Business Review.
Accessibility information for British Source Ultimate
Digimap
An online service that allows users to view and create maps of any location in Great Britain using Ordnance Survey map data.

Limitation - Registration is required, online registration is necessary before using this resource
Accessibility information for Digimap
Users will need to renew their individual user agreement for each of the services they want to use.
MarketLine Advantage
International market research. Offers a comprehensive mix of company, industry, country and financial data for every major marketplace in the world.
Accessibility information for MarketLine Advantage
User Guide (PDF, 2.1 MB).
Nexis UK
Is a news database which offers national, regional and international news from a range of sources on various subjects emphasising on business and industry, including company and industry reports. Its content is updated daily and many titles have a 20 year archive.

Limitation - You may only download a single copy of insubstantial portions of those Materials included in any individually searchable file or content source in the Online Services. Please note that the length of time to store a single copy of downloaded materials from this resource in machine readable form is limited to 90 days only. See details below for more information.

Nexis cannot be used for any non-academic purposes. Text data mining is not permitted within our Nexis UK licence.
Accessibility information for Nexis UK
The right to retrieve and store machine-readable copies of Materials is limited to the retrieval of a single copy of a reasonable portion of the Materials included in any individual file of the Online Services using the downloading commands of the Online Services or your web browser software and storage of that copy in machine readable form for no more than 90 days, primarily for one person’s exclusive use, to the extent the storage of those Materials is not further limited or prohibited by the Additional Terms.
PressReader
PressReader provides interactive, digital access to thousands of newspapers and magazines from around the world including titles in over 50+ languages. Useful for studying page layout, advertisements, photographs, etc. PressReader archives provide access to the last year of most publications.
Accessibility information for PressReader
ScienceDirect
ScienceDirect is a full-text database containing journal articles and book chapters from thousands of journals and ebooks. The majority of content is published by Elsevier. Subjects covered include science, technology, business, management, accounting, health sciences, engineering and social science.
Accessibility information for ScienceDirect
Full-text access is to subscribed content only
Westlaw UK
Westlaw UK covers all aspects of the law providing access to cases, legislation, journal articles and abstracts, full text practitioner books and commentary. Also contains the Legal Journals Index of UK legal periodicals back to 1986.
Accessibility information for Westlaw
UK cases, legislation and law reports.