Featured Resource: Inspec, from The IET
Posted on Tue, Aug 23, 2011
While patent search systems are useful in Article One Studies, the most unique references are usually non-patent literature. Inspec is a great example of a database that specializes in finding obscure non-patent literature from a wide variety of technological fields. Inspec is a database of “over 12 million bibliographic abstracts” and indexing to many full-text articles and reports. The database is compiled and organized by The Institution of Engineering and Technology.
An Extensive Database
More than three quarters of Inspec’s database consists of journals and serials, gathered from about 3,800 different sources. The database is available through the Inspec Direct search system. This vast collection makes Inspec a premier system for searching for non-patent literature. The journals are mostly scientific, but are not limited to scientific areas, in keeping with Inspec’s trend of combining many types of documents.
Inspec has established a classification system using different “disciplines” to demarcate the sections. These include physics, electrical engineering and electronics, computers and control, and other fields. In addition, the database has resources and journals dating all the way back to 1898 – much older than many other systems. Such an extensive history means that even if non-patent literature is a hundred years old and presumably lost, Inspec has the ability to find it.
Broad Historical Access
Inspec has manually recovered many graphs, charts, and other figures from original source documents for their archive. The database is actually split to make it easier to specify whether one is looking for documents before 1969 or afterwards. In Article One Studies, since dates are often so crucial, this option can drastically increase efficiency in searching. Technology written discussed prior to 1969 can often be extremely difficult to find, and these thousands of journals from before that date definitely separate Inspec from other databases.
Around 10% of Inspec’s database consists of references in non-English languages. For these documents, Inspec employees manually create and provide abstracts for its users. This is also done for many resources too old to have an abstract. Obviously, having a full-text document is preferable, but unique abstracts can still be truly valuable in the search process. Manual translations are usually stronger than machine translations, and having a translated abstract is still very helpful towards determining the possible use of the reference.
Inspec offers a number of different subscription packages. To learn more, visit their website here For additional information and review, visit the community report at Intellogist.
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