LibGuides: Engineering, Electronics, Materials science and Mathematics: Standards & patents

What are standards?

Standards are documents that establish a common technical specification, so products and processes can work safely, reliably and consistently. Some standards provide a common terminology or set of symbols for a particular field, to make sure different organisations are talking about the same thing when they use a given term or symbol. Standards are very commonly used in all branches of engineering.

Standards are published by a variety of different organisations, which often have a focus on a specific country or area of engineering.

Standards do not have the force of law in themselves: however, laws and regulations will often require you to meet certain standards, and so you may well have to follow those standards if you wish to manufacture or sell a product or service in a given country.

Main sources for standards

We have major collections of broad-ranging standards from three organisations. You can access all current standards from each organisation as PDFs, as well as some withdrawn and draft material.

British Standards Online This link opens in a new window
From 19th December 2020, British Standards Online will require you to install a plug-in to read it standards. We will provide further details as we learn more.
Standards from the British Standards Institute, on a wide variety of engineering, manufacturing, electronics, manufacturing, computing and management topics.
British Standards Online have recently started adding standards from other sources: we may not always have access to these; but we do have access to the British Standard Institute's own standards.
British standards are only applicable in the UK: however, some British standards have been adopted from standards produced by international bodies, such as ISO or CEN. Such standards will be indicated in their standard number - in the case of the previous example, BS ISO and BS EN respectively - and will be applicable outside the UK in the countries which belong to those bodies. Please note that the database can be searched either by standard number or by keyword, but not both: so if your search fails the first time, make sure that the right box is ticked under the search box.
ASTM Compass This link opens in a new window
Standards from the ASTM on engineering, materials testing, manufacturing and construction.
IEEE Xplore This link opens in a new window
Standards from IEEE on electronics, computing and telecommunications.
IEEE Xplore
In the database IEEE Xplore there are now over 3.8 million articles on computing related topics. There are thousands of early access articles that you can only find by searching IEEE Xplore (not by searching through Google Scholar or Library Search).

ISO & CEN standards

We do not subscribe to ISO or European CEN standards. However, BSI frequently adopt these standards as their own, with the result that the equivalent British Standard will be exactly the same as the ISO or CEN standard: in those cases, standards will have a standard number which begins BS ISO, BS EN or BS ISO EN . As a result, it is often worth searching for the standard number of an ISO or CEN standard on British Standards Online.

Some European standard organisations, such as the French AFNOR or German DIN standards, also adopt the same CEN standards as BSI: it is also worth searching for their standard numbers on British Standards Online.

British Standards Online This link opens in a new window
Standards on many topics from the British Standards Institute, including standards adopted from the ISO and CEN.
British standards are only applicable in the UK: however, some British standards have been adopted from standards produced by international bodies, such as ISO or CEN. Such standards will be indicated in their standard number - in the case of the previous example, BS ISO and BS EN respectively - and will be applicable outside the UK in the countries which belong to those bodies. Please note that the database can be searched either by standard number or by keyword, but not both: so if your search fails the first time, make sure that the right box is ticked under the search box.

Other sources for standards

Construction Information Service This link opens in a new window
A collection of standards for the UK civil engineering and construction industries, as well as the relevant regulations
Covers documents essential to the design and construction of buildings, construction management, contract documents, health and safety and design guidance. Also includes a direct link to the Building regulations, the Metric handbook and BS 5588, Fire precautions in buildings together with a link to NBS BRAD. Updated weekly.

Federal Aviation Regulations (FAR)
Standards and regulations for the aerospace industry, produced by the Federal Aviation Administration in the United States of America
Rail Safety and Standards Board
Railway Group Standards on health and safety for railways in the UK, which can be downloaded as PDFs.
Network Rail Standards
Standards produced by Network Rail for railway engineering and management in the UK. You will need to register with your university email address the first time you use it, and create your own login details.

What to do if a standard is not available in the Library?

Regrettably, it is generally impossible to order a standard through normal document supply services. However, if a particular standard is vital to your work, it may be possible to order a copy, especially for a dissertation project: please contact the library to ask about this.

What are patents?

Photo credit: 'Off-Shore Wind Turbine' by Sandy Buchanan

A patent is a licence from a government which gives an inventor exclusive rights to create, sell or use an invention they have developed. As patents must describe how the invention functions, they are excellent sources of technical data on how products and processes work.

Sources for patents

esp@cenet This link opens in a new window
Patents from around the world, including the British patent database and European Patent Office.
The worldwide database allows you to search patents from over 70 countries, with tens of millions of international patents available. The date to which coverage of patent goes back to depend varies with each each national database.
To conduct a general search for only GB documents please insert GB into the publication number field and either the year or publication date into the publication date field.
US Patent Full-text and Image Database This link opens in a new window
Patents from the United States. Also includes TESS, the US trademark database.
The complete text of patents from 1976 onwards can be searched, while only the bibliographical data of older patents can be searched.
Full-page images are available for all patents on the database for free.
The USPTO website also provides access to TESS, the US trademark database.
UK Intellectual Property Office This link opens in a new window
The Intellectual Property Office is the government organisation in charge of managing patents, copyright, trademarks and designs in the UK.
Information is available about these different types of intellectual property, with facilities to search trademarks, designs and- to a limited extent- patents. There is a link to esp@cenet to search for patents in more detail.

Sheffield Business & IP Centre
Sheffield Central Public Library has services to help with patent enquiries. The Central Library is just across the Arundel Gate road from the Adsetts Centre