Telecommunications Tutorial
This tutorial provides a shortcut to RIT Library resources of special interest to the
Telecommunications program, including the most relevant electronic databases and journals and
how to obtain documents, as well as course reserves and librarians to contact.
The following databases are the most likely to provide
citations to journal articles and other publications relevant to
telecommunications, and are the first place to start research on
a topic. A few of these databases, such as ABI Inform, provide
the full-text of some journal articles but most databases provide
only the article's citation and abstract. Some are more directory-like
and provide information about the telecommunications industry, companies
and their products and services. To obtain the full journal article,
see Obtaining Journal Articles, Books, and Other
Documents.
Accessing Databases from Off-Campus
RIT's licensing agreements with the database providers
require that access to these databases be restricted to RIT students,
faculty, and staff. If you are off-campus and are using any other
Internet connection than RIT's Dial IP connection to connect to
these databases, a database introductory page will tell you that
you are using an outside (non-RIT) Internet provider, and will allow
you to connect by proxy using your Grace account. If you are enrolled
in the Telecommunications program and don't have an RIT Grace Account,
also known as a DCE or Vax or Unix account, contact the Library
Reference Desk or ISC to get your account.
Choosing which Database to Search
You will probably need to search several databases
to find extensive references for your research topic. FACCTs,
produced by the Faulkner group, is a continuously updated database
covering the world of IT and Telecommunications. ABI/Inform focuses
on the business and management of telecommunications and has the
bonus of providing the full-text of many journal articles. Lexis/Nexis
provides the full text of many news and business publications.
Databases for more advanced research are also available. CompendexWeb
covers the entire field of engineering including many of the IEEE
journals relevant to telecommunications. ACM Digital Library
provides many full-text articles and conference papers in the
area of data communications. INSPEC covers the fields of
electrical engineering and computer science with a large emphasis
on telecommunications. The following table connects to the above
mentioned databases as well as others relevant to telecommunications.
Each introductory page should also include a link to a guide which
will aid you in searching.
RECOMMENDED DATABASES: http://wally.rit.edu/electronic/topic/compsci.html
Information Delivery Services (IDS) supplies books and photocopies
of any papers not available in the Wallace collection upon request.
In addition, for Distance Learners, IDS supplies books and articles from RIT
Library as well as from other libraries and delivery services. To find out how
to request items, check Services
for Distance Learners .
Many journals are available in full-text online. To see what Wallace
provides access to, check Einstein, the
library catalog. To see a list of Telecommunications journals the library subscribes
to in paper, click here
.
Your professor may have put articles on reserve for
you to read. Check RIT
Library Course Reserves to access these.
As you are probably aware, the Web is exploding with
telecommunications information, much of which is useful, but much
is not. Since anyone can publish a web page, it is important to
evaluate the quality and accuracy of information found on the web.
Ways to evaluate Internet resources can be found at
Thinking Critically about World Wide Web Resources .
To save time, try the links on the College
of Engineering page and the Golisano
College page. At the bottom of these pages you will find subject headings.
Once you click on any of the headings, a list of specific links will appear.
Librarians have already evaluated these resources, so they can be terrific leads
to information.
Linette Koren is the engineering
and computer science subject specialist. Feel free to email her
with any questions or comments.
Good luck!
Page maintained by: Linette
Koren
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