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Engineering


from a range of sources, including books, magazines, standards, patents and journals. ‘We gather information from a very wide range of sources and try to think about it from an end- user perspective,’ explained Forbes. Knovel can be searched either in a Google- type way or with a numerical search. ‘The


need to ensure that teams have easy access to information that is right. Google and Wikipedia don’t satisfy that,’ said Forbes.


Integration with other tools is also important. ‘The number 1 piece of software used by engineers is Excel. We have content directly exportable into Excel and have also just introduced an


‘The use of mobile technology for accessing engineering information can be expected to grow at the same rate as the overall increase in mobile usage’ Eric Pepper


information being searched is very complex, in a number of different forms. Someone might search with units in feet but the actual result is in metres. We do conversion on the fly so the search results will return both,’ he said. Knovel also does live maths. This means that engineers can use equations in Knovel to do calculations with their own data. ‘I think there’s recognition on the part of engineering managers that engineers need information to solve problems and that they


Reaearch Information hpc.pdf 1 05/11/2012


Excel plugin. This allows people to work directly in Excel but use our content,’ said Forbes, who noted that the company is also looking at integration into tools, such as CAD software.


Engineering mobile access Engineers are also impacted by wider trends in scholarly information and the internet generally. One such trend is the rise of mobile access to information.


Some engineering companies


provide staff with tablets, while others say 14:04


FEATURE


they will support any devices their staff bring into the office. This brings the desire to access engineering information on such devices. ‘The use of mobile technology for accessing engineering information can be expected to grow at the same rate as the overall increase in mobile usage, as tablets in particular provide more


tools to manage this information,’ predicted Pepper.


‘For the future SPIE is planning to enrich the conference experience further for our attendees by offering real-time mobile access to the material being presented during the event, including on-site mobile access to proceedings papers, live and recorded videos, and additional as-yet-to-be-determined enhancements,’ he added.


Of course innovation in information delivery is not simply about the information. Delivering high-quality, relevant information more quickly to engineers helps to fuel the invention of the future: the reactor casing, the bridge and even the smartphone that future engineers might use to access their conference proceedings, patents and other essential information.


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