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Web Databases for Cement and Concrete Information
There are many excellent and free databases on the web for finding
technical information on cement and concrete. These tools are maintained
by government agencies (your tax dollars at work), publishers, library
consortia, and other organizations. Databases allow you to perform
searches with far more efficient and relevant results because they
have been designed for accurate retrieval. Some databases provide
bibliographic references to journals and reports, with or without
abstracts; others contain links to the actual articles or reports.
The list below includes databases that the PCA Library has identified
as especially useful. Depending on your area of interest, you may
wish to bookmark selected sites. They will likely save you time
and lead you to more effective search results than Google, Yahoo,
or other broad search engines.
Major Databases
American
Concrete Institute
Searches all years of ACI Materials Journal, ACI Structural
Journal, Concrete International, SP-coded publications,
and technical documents. (Subscribers can access full text of journals;
nonmembers can download journal articles for a fee)
ASCE
Civil Engineering Database
This database provides easy bibliographic access to all 30 ASCE
journals (including Journal of Structural Engineering,
Journal of Bridge Engineering, Journal of Materials
in Civil Engineering), proceedings, books, and other publications.
ASCE Online
Research Library
Provides access to more than 33,000 full-text papers (for a fee)
from ASCE journals and proceedings. Approximately 4,000 additional
papers are added yearly.
Concrete
Construction Archives
Here you can search all past issues of Concrete Construction,
Concrete Producer, and Masonry Construction. You
can search all titles at once by keyword, title, author, or subject
category. Even better, you can download articles free!
Energy
Citations Database
The Energy Citations Database is produced by the US Department of
Energy (DOE). It contains bibliographic records for energy-related
technical information including reports, conference papers, journal
articles, books, dissertations, and patents. Since 1995, links to
full text have been added for many items. This database is particularly
useful for cement manufacturing topics such as emissions reduction,
energy efficiency, clean coal technology reports, etc.
IEEE
Xplore
IEEE Xplore’s database provides bibliographic access to all
IEEE publications, including the Cement Industry Technical Conference
from 1988 forward and other IEEE-sponsored conferences featuring
cement-related papers. This database is especially useful for cement
manufacturing environmental topics such as emission reduction technologies,
energy efficiency, waste fuels, etc. Records include abstracts.
Access to the full text is available with online purchase.
IngentaConnect
The IngentaConnect database indexes and abstracts hundreds of technical
journals from many publishers. It is one of the most comprehensive
collections of research articles online – over 20 million.
It is useful for the materials, structural, and environmental aspects
of cement and concrete.
National Technical
Information Service (NTIS)
NTIS is the largest central resource for government-funded scientific,
technical, engineering, and business-related information. The free
database covers reports from 1990 forward from over 200 federal
agencies including NIST, Federal Highway Administration, Cold Regions
Research and Engineering Lab. (The complete NTIS database back to
1970 is fee-based and available through the PCA Library.)
ScienceDirect
ScienceDirect is the best tool for searching the contents of Cement
and Concrete Research, Cement and Concrete Composites,
Construction and Building Materials, and the hundreds of
other journals published by Elsevier. Records provide complete abstracts.
Thomas
Telford Journals
UK publisher Thomas Telford issues several major research journals
including Magazine of Concrete Research, Advances in
Cement Research, Structural Concrete, and a number
of relevant proceedings, issued as quarterly journals. You can search
all or just selected journals at this site for the past 3 years,
and get full abstracts.
TRIS
The TRIS (Transportation Research Information Service) database
is the premier resource for transportation-related information.
It abstracts and indexes all major transportation journals and conference
proceedings, and currently has well over a half million entries.
It has an extensive number of links to full text documents as well.
Trade Organization Databases
It is becoming more and more standard for trade organizations to
offer free databases that allow you to search the contents of single
journals. Some of these are listed below.
American
Shotcrete Association
Search Shotcrete magazine at this site.
National Concrete
Masonry Institute
This resource is especially good for technical masonry information,
because it includes not only NCMA publications but reports of other
organizations, congress papers, etc. It is quite selective outside
of NCMA literature, however.
Precast/Prestressed
Concrete Institute (PCI)
This PCI Journal Abstracts database indexes the PCI Journal
from its start in 1956.
Library Collections: Online Catalogs
The libraries below have especially strong collections on cement
and concrete topics. Materials can usually be borrowed through interlibrary
loan services. The PCA Library can borrow materials on behalf of
PCA Member companies if we do not own the item.
Cement
and Concrete Association of Australia
Cement
and Concrete Association of New Zealand
Cement
and Concrete Institute of South Africa
Institution
of Civil Engineers (ICE) Virtual Library
The ICE (UK) claims to be "the largest repository of full text
civil engineering papers in the world" with an archive of technical
papers from 1836 to the present day. The full text is available
to subscribers, or by pay-per-view.
Linda Hall Library
The largest private collection of scientific and technical literature
in the U.S.
Portland Cement Association
Library
TLCat (click
on TLCat)
TLCat stands for the Transportation Libraries Catalog. It is an
online catalog that lists the books and reports held by all the
U.S. transportation-related libraries.
Specialized:
Earthquake
Engineering Abstracts
Citations to earthquake engineering literature from the National
Information Service for Earthquake Engineering, Earthquake Engineering
Research Center (EERC), UC Berkeley. Contents include selected technical
reports, conference papers, monographs, and journal articles. Coverage:
1971-present.
Quakeline
A bibliographic database produced by the MCEER Information Service.
It covers earthquakes, earthquake engineering, natural hazard mitigation,
and related topics. It includes records for various publication
types, such as journal articles, conference papers, technical reports,
maps, and videotapes. QUAKELINE was launched in May 1987.
Search Engines
Scirus
Scirus is the most comprehensive science-focused search engine on
the Internet. Produced by Elsevier, publisher of many cement and
concrete-related journals as well as other technical fields. Won
award in 2005 for “Best Directory or Search-Engine”
from WebMarketing Association.
Google Scholar
Enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including
peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical
reports from all areas of research.
Keep in mind that there are also hundreds of fee-based databases
that are available to libraries (such as the PCA Library), and for
a truly in-depth literature search, whether the topic is technical,
environmental, or business-related, these resources, as well as
the thousands of print-only resources, are essential for accurate
results.
For questions, or to request a search, contact the PCA Library
at library@cement.org or
(847) 972-9174.
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