MECH 547 Mechanics of Biological Materials

Welcome to the MECH 547 Course Guide! This guide is made to help you find information for your assignments in this course. If you would like any help with finding information, please feel free to make an appointment. Good places to start are by:

• using the Research toolkit to generate search terms on your topic.
• using Research databases to find articles on your topic.
• understanding Access and full text via McGill Library.
• learning more about Writing and citing and how citation management software can help you organize your references and cite your sources. 

To see if there are books on reserve (short-term loan) for this course, please click here and type in your course number.

Best bets

Engineering database - Compendex

• References to journal articles and conference papers on all aspects of engineering. Check out the short tutorial below on the basics of searching Compendex on the Engineering Village platform.

Multidisciplinary database - Web of Science

• References to journal articles and conference papers, as well as contains information about how many times an article has been cited and who cited it.

Engineering database - SciTech Premium Collection

• Covers engineering and natural science topics, including bioengineering and biotechnology.

Additional databases

Multidisciplinary database - Scopus

• References to journal articles and conference papers, as well as information about how many times an article has been cited and who cited it; A lot of overlap with Compendex.

Multidisciplinary database - Google Scholar

• Includes non-academic and non-peer-reviewed sources so you need to examine each search result to determine if it is an appropriate academic source for your research paper.
• Handout: Get the most out of Google Scholar
• McGill Library links in Google Scholar

Biomedical and life sciences database - PubMed

• Free resource covering biomedical literature. Use McGill's special PubMed link that will connect your search results in PubMed with McGill Library journal holdings to see what is available in full text through McGill.

Note: All that you need is one good paper to help you find more - try these tips for expanding your search!

Access

Find out about accessing the Library's online resources from on and off campus.

Obtaining materials that are not available at McGill

McGill students and staff may order articles and books that are not available at McGill using the library's Interlibrary Loan service.

Consult these resources for tips on how to write a research paper or technical report.

For more writing resources, click here.

Also, try the McGill Writing Centre.

Citation styles

Best bets

• IEEE citation style, commonly used in engineering:
  • IEEE Editorial Style Manual and IEEE Reference Guide
  • A Quick Guide to Citing in IEEE Style (McGill Library)
• Science citation style:
  • Instructions for preparing an initial manuscript. Scroll to subsection entitled "Science Citation Style".
• APA citation style:
  • APA style (Purdue University)

Other popular options

• AIAA citation style:
  • Preparation of Papers for AIAA Technical Conferences
• ASME citation style:
  • ASME References
  • ASME Citation Guide (University of Missouri Libraries)
• Chicago citation style:
  • The Chicago manual of style is available online through McGill Library. The Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide is the easiest place to start. Click on the "Author-Date" tab for the style used by those in engineering and the physical, natural and social sciences. 

Citation management software

EndNote

• McGill students and staff can download EndNote citation management software for free. With this software you can get references directly from many databases, such as Web of Science.
• A Guide to Using EndNote (PDF handout)
• EndNote can automate the formatting of your references in many different citation styles. If you are using IEEE, APA, Chicago or Science, the output styles are already installed in EndNote. For AIAA and ASME, you will need to download the output styles from the following links: AIAA output style and ASME output style. For Windows: Open and save the .ens file in C:\Program files\EndNote\Styles. For Macs: Open and save the .ens file in Applications:EndNote:Styles.
• EndNote Web is also available at McGill University. To access EndNote Web you need to create a personal account. You can sign up for an account with your McGill email address.
• There are library workshops given on how to use this software effectively.

JabRef

• If you are using LaTeX to create your document, your may want to make use of JabRef open source software to manage your references.

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