ChE 333T - Engineering Communication

Before you can write with authority about a topic, you need to know something about it.  Educating yourself about the general concepts and technologies involved is always the first step to preparing a presentation or writing a paper. Before you start, consider these points:

• You may be tempted to just "google it" and try to learn that way.  But Googling is often a waste of time because web search engines are unvetted and unfiltered torrents of miscellaneous information, disinformation and sponsored content (ads).  Save time and confusion by using more authoritative sources.
• Journals contain plentiful peer-reviewed academic research, but journal articles usually aren't a good way to learn the basics about a topic.  They're very narrowly written for readers who already have familiarity with it.

Try the approaches below instead.

Encyclopedias provide topic overviews, explanations of concepts, and bibliographies for further research.  

Books can help by providing an in-depth overview of a topic that articles generally don't give you.

Here are some "canned" shortcuts into our Catalog:

(These shortcuts are just starting points using established subject headings - they're not comprehensive.  Keep searching in the Catalog using desired keywords to find more.)

Engineers often need to search for background information on companies.  This requires a suite of specialized business resources that you can learn about via this guide: