What function does the Literature Review play?
- Assessment of the current state of research on a topic
- Find out: What's been done in the past
- Find out: What have other people tried to do in this area
- Identify the successes and failures in a project area
- You do not want to present at a meeting/conference and have someone tell you that someone else has already done that work
- Identification of the experts and key organizations/companies in a particular area of work
- Identification of key questions or issues about a topic that need further work
- Determination of methodologies used in past work on the same or similar topics
Information Resources Used in a Literature Review
- Information resources of value
- Academic/research journals and conference papers
- Topical searching
- Citation searches
- Review articles from academic or popular journals
- Popular, trade journals
- Conference and trade show literature
- Patents
- Engineering Village
- Google Patents
- USPTO
- European Patents
- Standards
- American National Standards Institute (ANSI)
- American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM)
- Society for Automotive Engineers (SAE)
- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
- American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
- American Society of Agricultural Engineers (ASAE)
- International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
- Handbooks
- Technical reports - governmental, industry
- Academic/research journals and conference papers
Collaborative Search in the IDEA Lab
- Design learning or design thinking
- Simultaneously search multiple resources
- Display results on multiple high-definition touch screen monitors
- Uses a version of the Easy Search system
- Uses voice synthesis for suggestions
- EBSCO, Scopus, Inspec, and Online Catalog resources
- Datasets and other relevant databases on Easy Search screen
