ENGLISH 202C: TECHNICAL WRITING

INTERNET
RESOURCE GUIDE

A COLLECTION OF ONLINE RESOURCES FOR

ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS

NAME: Michael Wilson

DATE: 2/2/15

TABLE OF CONTENTS
I.

Preface
A. Contents and Scopepage 3
B. Audience and Purpose....page 3
C. Assumptions...page 3
D. Organization of the Guide..page 3
E. Tips for Using the Guidepage 4

II.

Journal Resources & Databases

A. Electronic Index
i. Engineering Village.....page 5
B. Professional Journal
i. Journal of Electrical and
Computer Engineeringpage 6
C. Government Resources
i. Catalog of US Government Publicationspage 7
D. Government Database
i. The Statistical Abstract of the US...page 8

III. Professional Associations & Services

A. News Service
i. EE Times.page 9
B. Information of Professional Associations
i. Institute of Electric and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
page 10
C. Potential Employer and Job Search Services
i. ECareer..page 11

PREFACE
Contents and Scope:
This guide is a collection of information that is pertinent to Electrical Engineering majors
that are interested in looking at the different resources that are available on the internet. It
contains a Journal Resources & Databases section as well as a Professional Associations &
Services section. The Journal Resources & Databases section is specifically regarding resources
that any Electrical Engineer, regardless of level will find helpful while they work on projects.
The Professional Associations & Services section is for those Electrical Engineers that would
like information regarding News and Job searches within the field of EE and technology.
Audience and Purpose:
This guide will help many individuals in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
that are in their third to fourth years in college, or are already in industry working. It is strictly
for these majors because any other individual with a different background might not understand
the information that is on the resources recommended in this guide. Anyone that is working
within these fields could use these resources for work, research, and even projects done for
leisure. The job finder resource is a great tool also for Penn State students and alumni that are
currently looking for jobs within the engineering field.
Assumptions:
There are some assumptions that I had while creating this guide. The reader must have an
intermediate understanding of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. They should also
be interested in these fields given the fact that this guide could be used as a tool to find resources
for their on-the-side leisure projects. The reader should have a working knowledge of the internet
since the resources are primarily internet based and requires basic knowledge of how to navigate
internet resources. The student should also be a student or alumni from Penn State and have their
user id and password available to access the schools resources.
Organization of the Guide:
The guide is organized in a very formal type of manner. You first have the front matter
which includes the Title page, Table of Contents and Preface. After the front matter comes the
abstracts themselves with all the information about the resources available to people interested in
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. The Table of Contents allows the reader to quickly
take a look at what this guide provides and what pages the different abstracts are on. In terms of
the Abstracts, the guide is split up into two parts. The first part is a Journal Resources &
Databases section and the second part is the Professional Associations & Services section.

Tips for using the Guide:

The table of contents provides a great outline of what is included in this guide and allows
the reader to quickly locate what page they are looking for. Each abstract provides information to
the reader that will be very beneficial for individuals looking to learn more about the Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science discipline. Each abstract itself contains tips for each resource
and how to navigate the websites for first time users.

Engineering Village
Electronic Index
Location and Availability
Home Page:http://www.engineeringvillage.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/search/quick.url
Description
The Engineering Village is a comprehensive online database that is geared towards any
engineering discipline. It merges two different databases called Compendex and Inspec to pool in
bibliographic citations and articles into one site for any Penn State student. As long as you have a
User ID and password for Penn State you can have access to this great resource. It uses a lot of
refinement searches so that the user can pinpoint specific searches.
As an electrical engineering major, this site would prove to be very useful if you know what type
of article you are trying to look for. As I searched for general Electrical Engineering in the
dialog box, a list of 2,796,398 articles were found on the site. Going through all of those articles
to find what you are looking for is absurd, so by using the refinement feature, you can narrow
your searches tremendously. This search engine can be a great resource to find anything you
want related to electrical engineering.
Tips

Make sure to have a good understanding for what you are searching for on the website
before you use general key words. You will not be able to look through hundreds of
thousands of articles trying to find what you are looking for.
This is a great resource for users that know the author and title of the work in order to get
a better search result.

Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Professional Journal
Location and Availability
Home Page: http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jece/
Description
The Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering is a journal that compiles and publishes
research articles regarding topics such as circuits and systems, communications and signal
processing. It is a peer-reviewed, open access journal that is published by the Hindawi
Publishing Corporation. The peer-revision of the publication is done by several faculty from
universities all around the world and is divided up by specialization within the topics stated
above. About one-fifth of the articles that are submitted to the journal get accepted making it a
very highly competitive journal to get published on. Not only does the article get published
within the journal, it also is included in a number of databases/resources such as the Applied
Science and Technology Source, the Computer Science Index and many more. This journal
would be incredibly useful to any individual in academia interested in reading up on research
that is happening all around the world in those three specializations. People that write their own
professional research papers regarding electronics may also use this website to have it peerreviewed and hopefully published in the magazine.
Tips

Following the website above directs you to the homepage of the journal. The homepage
explains everything about the journal. On top of the website there is a tab called Table of
Contents which directs you to the updated version that includes the articles that have
been published so far in 2015. As of this year, there are only four articles but these
articles are followed up by all the publications that have been published in previous
years. In total there is an archive of about 380 articles.
If someone would like to publish their article in the journal, the side bar titled Journal
Menu has links to pages that explain all the guidelines that you need to know about
preparing a paper submission with them.

Catalog of U.S. Government Publications

Government Resources
Location and Availability
Home Page: http://catalog.gpo.gov/F/?func=find-d-0&local_base=GPO01PUB&clear_level=2
Description
The Catalog of U.S. Government Publications is a database used for finding government
documents and publications that date back towards the end of the 1800s. These publications
come from the three branches of the government (Legislative, Executive and Judicial) and make
up the National Bibliography of U.S. Government Publications. 500,000 publications have been
recorded since 1976 and the catalog is updated every day. It contains records for historical
publications and provides a link to them online. Following the link above will direct you to the
homepage which contains a robust search engine. This search engine can be used to search either
very general or very specific content by filling out the Advanced Search: Full Catalog section.
The information provided on this website can be a very useful source for gathering information
about Electrical Engineering. If the user is trying to look up any topic regarding electrical
engineering, they would type in Electrical Engineering as a key word in the Enter Word/
phrase space. A search result shows that there are 1094 records that match that key word. In
my case, the paper I chose is called Role of wind power in primary frequency response of an
interconnection : preprint/. It is written by Y. C. Zhang; published by [Golden, Colo] : National
Renewable Energy Laboratory, 2013. The main purpose of this conference paper was to talk
about using the frequency response of an interconnection by using electrical inverters and wind
power plants to distribute electric power throughout the United States.
Tips

This is a great tool to use if you are looking for any type of research material within your
field. Just be aware that there could be a maximum of 2000 records that are available at
your disposal.
Make sure to be able to narrow down your search criteria as much as possible before
using this site. The advanced search is a great resource to provide critical key words in
order to narrow down what you are looking for.

The Statistical Abstract of the United States

Website Government Database
Location and Availability
Homepage: http://statabs.proquest.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/sa/?id=ca2889d6-27b5-417595da-e510ca9e1d8a
Description
The Statistical Abstract of the United States is a database that is filled with information regarding
the U.S Census Bureau. In the present day, many people associate the abstract with the Census
however it was initially commissioned by the Bureau of Statistics within the treasury department
back in 1879. In 1903 it was then controlled by the Department of Commerce before handing
responsibility over to the Census Bureau in 1938. It is used to keep a record of anything that falls
under the 30 sections it holds. Its sections are all encompassing making its information base
incredibly immense. You may find anything from Education, Elections, Prices, Energy and
Utilities etc. Of course, the first two sections deal with the Population and the Births, Deaths,
Marriages and Divorces within the United States due to being under control of the US Census
Bureau.
For EE majors the abstract would be very useful to find out information within our field. For
example, the link would be helpful for someone who is interested in the starting salaries for
college graduates by different levels of education and field of study. This information ranges
from the years 2005 to 2013. They have divided up the engineering field into 8 different subdivisional specialties. One of the specialties happens to be Electrical Engineering. Anyone
looking to see the difference in salaries between a Bachelors, Masters, and Doctorate degree
within electrical engineering can come to see the differences in salaries throughout the years.
This type of information can possibly either convince or dissuade people from either getting
higher education or starting in industry after college.
http://statabs.proquest.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/sa/abstract.html?table-no=302&accno=C70951.4&year=2015&z=34F446C96D3B29583E5F445BC25FA075F0961229&id=b14845bb-86f6409f-aae6-e3610a7a813e
Tips

The Statistical Abstract of the U. S. online edition is a very user friendly tool to use for
anyone looking to gather more statistical information about whatever topic they are
looking for. The Table of Contents on the left hand side of the homepage directs you to
the 30 different sections that the abstract provides. These topics are very general so be
sure to pick correctly where your topic of interest may be located.
A faster method may be to enter in the search bar at the top of the website whatever key
words you may need in order to find the information that you want. For example, the link
used above was found by simply typing Electrical Engineering starting salaries and it
came up as the first table on my results list.
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EE Times
News Service
Location and Availability
Home Page: http://www.eetimes.com/
Description
Following the link above directs you to the homepage for the EE Times. This website is used as a
news outlet for the electronics community and is a great resource to keep up on current events
within the field. The website is able to appeal to a wide audience ranging from the electronics
hobbyist to the career electrical or computer engineer. Anything that you could possibly want to
find out about the newest technologies being revealed to the world can be found on here. They
have many links that can take you to different parts of the website including News and Analysis,
to an Opinion page. The opinion page for example, allows you to read a myriad of different blogs
from their very own writers on anything regarding todays technology. They also have links for
educational content such as webinars, tech papers and courses to name a few.
Someone within my field would definitely find this site to be incredibly informing. Just like any
other news service such as the Wall Street Journal, this is a great way to hear about what is going
on within one particular niche field. The Wall Street Journal is to finance and accounting majors
as the EE Times is to electrical and computer engineering majors. On the top of the website there
is a topics bar which links you to any topic related to the field. Topics range from Power
Management, Programmable Logic Devices, Wireless Networking and more. Any topic you
would like to read up on either for fun or as research can be found on this website.
Tips

If you plan on returning to this website frequently, I would recommend to sign up for
their newsletter by clicking on the link in the upper right hand corner of the website. If
you are a new user, it may prompt you to sign up to create a user name and password
before you continue.
The Breaking News section is located underneath the topics bar and is constantly
showing the top four hottest stories that have hit the tech industry that particular day.
If you are searching for technical papers and courses, you may scroll over to the
education tab at the top of the website and click on either Tech Papers or Courses in
the drop down menu. You can also access these by scrolling to the very bottom of the
homepage and youll find a list of content relating to these topics.

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

Website- Information on Professional Associations
Location and Availability
Home Page: http://www.ieee.org/about/index.html
Description
This is the home page of the IEEE website. IEEE is the worlds largest professional association
that is dedicated to advancing innovation and excellence within a wide variety of world changing
technologies. These technologies vary from healthcare, robotics, communications and computing
to name a few. It is the responsibility of the IEEE to maintain and set the standard of
professionalism within the field of electrical engineering worldwide. This website offers a
myriad of information regarding anything that deals with membership; societies; publications
and journal articles.
The information that is provided on the IEEE website is very beneficial to electrical engineers all
around the world regardless of experience level. It provides information about signing up for
membership to the association and explains what you can do with the membership. Being a
member of the IEEE can be very rewarding since employers look very highly towards engineers
that are a part of the association. It provides a ton of up to date information not only on its
website but at the many conferences that the IEEE hosts. These conferences and events inform
engineers on the top of the line research so they can stay updated and educated on the newest
technology. As an electrical engineer, you will most likely use the IEEE website and its resources
a lot throughout your career.
Tips

When you first access the website, there is tons of information that is given to you. If you
are a new member, you can simply go to the upper right hand corner of the page and click
on Create Account in order to get signed up with the IEEE to use its fantastic benefits
and resources.
There is an RSS feed for anything that is electrical engineering related in current events
throughout the world on the bottom of the page. You can use this to stay on top of the
newest technology and research what type of work other engineers are doing within the
field.
You can also be directed to the many different parts of the website by looking at the top
and finding the six blue tabs. These tabs are About IEEE, Membership & Services,
Societies & Communities, Publications & Standards, Conferences & Events, and
Education & Careers. By clicking on these tabs you will have access to the immense
amount of information that the IEEE has for you regarding anything you might possibly
need in your career as an electrical engineer.

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ECareer
Website - Potential Employers and Job Search Services
Location and Availability
Homepage: http://www.engr.psu.edu/career/eCareerlogin/Default.aspx
Description
ECareer is a career services management system website that is owned and operated by Penn
State. It was made for Penn State students, alumni and any employers that would like to hire
individuals at the university. It is specifically for those people that are in the College of
Engineering and the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. This site is a very effective tool for
any student in college that is looking for any research, internships, co-ops and full time jobs.
An electrical engineering major would find this site incredibly useful to find jobs all over the
country. Since we are the number one in job recruitment in the nation, there are a plethora of
companies that post jobs onto the site all the time. Theres tons of information regarding Career
Fairs and information sessions that are available on campus. You can click on those links to show
you all the information that you might need to know including the companies that are available at
these events. You can also upload your resume, cover letters and letters of recommendations onto
this website and submit them to any job that you might be qualified for. Its as simple as a click
of a button to apply for jobs! Just follow the link above to direct you to the site and follow the
directions.
Tips

If you are a first time user and are a College of Engineering student at Penn State, you
would want to follow the link above and select on Student. You will then be prompted
to login using your user name and password.
Once you are in the site, you want to click on the Profile tab at the top of the page to
and follow the directions that help you build your profile. Include your name, GPA,
semester standing and other pertinent information that you may want employers knowing
about you.
Once you fill out information for your profile, you should think about uploading a current
resume and cover letter. Try to submit these documents early due to the fact that the
career services department needs to approve these documents before you submit them to
companies.

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