This book offers new engineers and engineering students appropriate and effective strategies to find data, statistics, and research to support decision making. The authors describe the utility of solid reputable sources and help readers go beyond reliance on the quick Internet search, a habit which is often both inadequate to complex tasks and a source of criticism from employers. Some sources are free; others are available through libraries, or by purchase or subscription. This title can be used as a guide in concert with the advice of professors and colleagues, and potentially as a textbook. The examples are primarily from chemical and agricultural engineering, but the strategies could be adapted to other disciplines. An array of sources are shown, ranging from scholarly or professional societies, data sources, and books, to handbooks and journal sources, and less commonly used credible government documents and Web resources, including information from the USDA, the EPA and the DOE. Two case studies show research processes and the application of the underlying strategies and some of the tools.

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Patricia Kirkwood is the Engineering and Mathematical Sci ences Librarian at the University of Arkansas. She took this po sition in 2004 after serving at her alma mater, Pacific Lutheran University, as the librarian focusing in science, engineering, nursing, and music. Prior to these positions, Patricia specialized in physical sciences information as the head of the Physical Sci ences Library at Cornell University and the chemistry librarian at Emory University. In addition to her time in academic posi tions, she was a librarian at Bell Communications Research in New Jersey and a chemist at Hercules, Inc. at the powder plant in Utah. Patricia has an undergraduate degree in chemistry and an MLIS from the University of Illinois. Necia Parker-Gibson is an associate librarian at the University of Arkansas. She is subject specialist for multiple departments in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences and the Bumpers College of Agriculture, Food, and Life Sciences. She has served as editor for two academic journals. Previous to the University of Arkansas, she served as a librarian for a lobbying group in Baton Rouge. She received her MLS from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, and holds a Bachelor's degree in Agriculture