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Control Engineering

Guide to Information Resources for EE419/EE519

Handbooks

Specialized reference books, such as those listed below, can provide you with a detailed overview of your topic as well as lead you to additional sources of information through lists of references or bibliographies. Unless otherwise noted, the handbooks listed below are shelved in the UGL/SEL Reference Collection located on the 1st floor of Capen Hall.
  • Instrumentation Reference Book, B.E. Noltingk, 2nd ed., 1995
      UGL/SEL Ref QC53 .I574
  • Measurement, Instrumentation and Sensors Handbook, J.G. Webster, 1999
  • Control Handbook, W.S. Levine, 1996
      UGL/SEL Ref TJ213 .C642
  • Electrical Engineering Handbook, R.C. Dorf, 2nd ed., 2000
  • Industrial Electronics Handbook, J.D. Irwin, 1997
      UGL/SEL Ref TK7881 .I52
  • Instrument Engineers' Handbook, B.G. Liptak, 4th ed., 2003
      UGL/SEL Ref TS156.8 .I56
  • Industrial Control Handbook, Andrew Parr, 3rd ed., 1998
      UGL/SEL Ref TS156.8 .P24
  • Process/Industrial Instruments and Controls Handbook, D.M. Considine, 5th ed., 1999
  • Standard Handbook of Plant Engineering, R.C. Rosaler, 3rd ed., 2002
      UGL/SEL Ref TS184 .S7
  • Marks' Standard Handbook for Mechanical Engineers, 10th ed., 1996

Books

To search for books on industrial control topics, use BISON, the UB Libraries Catalog. The catalog offers access to over three million books and other materials owned by the UB Libraries. You can connect to BISON via http://bison.buffalo.edu/. You can search BISON by author, title, subject, or keyword. For subject searching, use any of the subject headings below:

1 AUTOMATIC CONTROL
*Search Also Under:
2 ACTUATORS
3 AUTOMATIC GAIN CONTROL
4 AUTOMATIC TIMERS
5 AUTOMATION
6 BINARY CONTROL SYSTEMS
7 CARRIER CONTROL SYSTEMS
8 CONTROL BOARDS ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING
9 CYBERNETICS
10 DELAY LINES
11 DIGITAL CONTROL SYSTEMS
12 ELECTRIC CONTROLLERS
13 ERROR CORRECTING CODES INFORMATION THEORY
14 FEEDBACK CONTROL SYSTEMS
15 FEEDFORWARD CONTROL SYSTEMS
16 FLIGHT CONTROL
17 GOVERNORS MACHINERY
18 GUIDANCE SYSTEMS FLIGHT
19 HYDRAULIC CONTROL
20 INCREMENTAL MOTION CONTROL
21 INTELLIGENT CONTROL SYSTEMS
22 LATHES--NUMERICAL CONTROL
23 LINEAR CONTROL SYSTEMS
24 MACHINE TOOLS--NUMERICAL CONTROL
25 PID CONTROLLERS
26 PNEUMATIC CONTROL
27 PREDICTIVE CONTROL
28 PROCESS CONTROL
29 PROGRAMMABLE CONTROLLERS
30 SERVOMECHANISMS
31 SWITCHING THEORY
32 TEMPERATURE CONTROL
33 TRANSFER FUNCTIONS
34 WOODWORKING MACHINERY--NUMERICAL CONTROL

You can also search the catalog by keyword, combining words and phrases. For example, select Keyword from the pulldown menu and enter the terms:

robot? and control?

The word "and" in the above keyword search directs the computer to retrieve records that contain both of your search terms. The question mark (?) is a truncation, or wildcard, symbol and will pull up records with all forms of these words, i.e., robot, robots, robotic, robotics, etc., and control, controlling, controller, controllers, etc.

We also have access to electronic books through the following services:

And you can expand your search for books beyond UB using WorldCat, a mega-catalog with 40+ million records for books and other materials owned by more than 20,000 libraries around the world. To connect to WorldCat, go to: http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/e-resources/worldcat.html. If you find a book in WorldCat that isn't available at UB, you can request that we borrow it for you from another library using ILLiad, our Interlibrary Loan Service; go to: http://ulilliad.lib.buffalo.edu/illiad/lml/logon.html.

Journal Articles

To search for journal articles by topic, use a database, such as those listed below. These databases will provide you with a list of references, or citations, to journal articles (as well as, in some cases, conference papers, technical reports, dissertations, government documents, etc.). In addition to providing you with a complete reference (author's name, article title, journal name, volume/issue number, page numbers, and date), many databases also provide an abstract, or summary, of the article. Some of these databases also provide full text - see descriptions below for each database.

  • Compendex Plus (Engineering Index)
    http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/e-resources/compendex.html
    Provides references plus abstracts (as well as selected full text) to journal articles and conference papers in all areas of engineering. Available online for the years 1969-present.

  • IEEE Xplore
    http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/e-resources/ieee.html
    Provides full text access to publications of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) including journals, magazines, transactions, and conferences.

  • INSPEC
    http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/e-resources/inspec.html
    Provides citations plus abstracts and full text access where available for journal articles and conference papers in computer engineering, control technology, all areas of electronics and electrical engineering, and physics for the years 1969-present.

  • Science Citation Index Expanded
    http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/e-resources/sci.html
    Provides citations plus abstracts and selected full text where available to journal articles on a wide range of scientific and technical topics. Available online for the years 1973-present.

  • ABI/INFORM Global
    http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/e-resources/abi.html
    Provides citations with abstracts (and in many cases the full text) of articles in over 1,000 business and management science periodicals including trade journals, newsletters, and specialized newspapers. Can be used to research the robotics industry. Available online for the years 1971-present.

For a more extensive listing of databases in engineering, consult Resources by Subject pages at http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/cgi-test/subject.html.

Technical Reports

Technical reports are typically used to report the progress of research and development activities. The Science & Engineering Library has a collection of several million technical reports, most of which are on microfiche. They are shelved on the second floor of Capen Hall. The databases below will provide you with references for reports, including their report/accession number, which we use to file reports in our microfiche collection. A reference librarian can help you determine whether or not we have the technical report you are looking for and locate it for you.

  • NTIS (federally-sponsored R+D)
    http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/e-resources/ntis.html
    Provides citations and abstracts for technical reports describing government-sponsored research from 1964 to the present.

  • NASA Technical Reports
    http://ntrs.nasa.gov/
    Provides citations (and in some instances full text) for technical reports produced by NASA's research centers. Coverage is for the 1960s to the present.

  • DTIC Technical Reports
    http://stinet.dtic.mil/str/index.html
    Provides access to citations to unclassified Department of Defense documents from late December 1974 to the present. Also contains full-text versions of unclassified technical reports from September 1998 to the present.

Standards

Standards are detailed instructions that explain how something is to be manufactured, managed, designed, or otherwise handled. Use the tools below to identify and locate standards:

  • IEEE Xplore
    http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/e-resources/ieee.html
    IEEE Xplore includes the full text of all IEEE standards. Fronm the left-hand side menu in IEEE Xplore, select “Standards,” and then enter either a standard number or a keyword to locate standards titles containing that number or keyword.

  • Guide to Standards
    http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/asl/guides/standards.html
    Lists major standards as well as guides to standards information, test methods, and building codes in our collections and other local collections, with links to engineering standard web catalogs and websites.

Patents

Patents are a rich source of scientific and technical information.

  • U.S. Patent Databases
    http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html
    Produced by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, this publicly accessible website provides free full-text access to U.S. patents and patent applications. The Issued Patents Database contains the full text content of U.S. patents back to 1790. Patents from 1976-present can be searched by keyword as well as by patent number, classification code, inventor's name, assignee's (company's) name, primary examiner's name, and issue and application date, etc. Patents from 1790-1975 can be searched by patent number and by classification code only. The Patent Applications Database contains the full text of patent applications from March 15, 2001, to the present. Note: Complete images for patents and patent applications are included in a compressed TIFF format that requires special viewing software.

  • Worldwide Patents Full-Text at ESP@CENET
    http://ep.espacenet.com/
    The European Patent Office has developed a worldwide patent database of over 30 million patents, many with full-text page images, available at no charge. Full bibliographic information (title, abstract, and patent numbers) for patents from 61 countries can be searched as far back as 1984, depending on the country. For 23 countries, you can search on titles and display full-text page images (PDF files) as far back as 1920. European, World, and Japanese patents are included as well as patents from numerous other countries on every continent, including the U.S.

Web Sites

Using Search Engines

To search the Internet yourself, use a search engine, such as AltaVista or Google. For example, in Google, you might enter the following search string:

    +"alternating current" +circuit* +model*
The plus signs (+) direct the search engine to retrieve only those records which contain all three terms. The asterisk (*) is the truncation symbol in and directs the search engine to search on all forms of those words. Enclosing alternating current in quotation marks ensures that Google will search for those two words as a phrase--next to one another and in that order.

For links to major search engines and directories, see the UB Libraries World Wide Web Search Guide at http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/search/searchint.html guide. For tips on how to search effectively using these tools, see Search Engine Features for Searchers at http://www.searchenginewatch.com/facts/ataglance.html.

This guide was originally prepared to provide assistance with a review article assignment. Students can direct their questions to Nancy Schiller, UB Engineering Librarian, schiller@buffalo.edu.