Research Guides: Patents, Trademarks, and Standards: Standards

What are Standards?

Standards are documents approved by recognized national and international bodies that ensure that products, services and systems are reliable, consistent and safe. Standards as registered technical documents define requirements, specifications, uniformity, and guidelines.

Standards are essential documents for scholarly research. Some standards databases or catalogs cover association/society, national and international standards and link to full-text documents when appropriate. Alternate databases index and describe standards, but require a subscription or a cost to acquire individual standards. Contact the Brock Library to ask any questions, gain help finding the full text of a specific standard (don't pay for it, let us help!) or learn more about searching for full-text standards.

The following standards services / databases is not a complete list. Ask if you wish to search for or obtain standards from alternate agencies e.g. ISO Standards.

Library databases for searching standards

The following library databases can be used to locate standards:

CSA Standards: CSA OnDemand This link opens in a new window
- Provides full-text access to the complete collection of Canadian standards and codes as well as related handbooks, guidelines and commentaries.
- Coverage: from 1924-current.
- Note: Users are permitted to download PDFs, except for codes and standards-for these documents please use 'View Online' option. Off-campus users can only use the “View Online” option. See the Offline Access Guide and the Quick User Guide for details on viewing and download options.
- Permitted Uses
ASTM Standards and Digital Engineering Library This link opens in a new window
- Covers a broad range of standards in the engineering disciplines, including aerospace, biomedical, chemical, civil, environmental, geological, health and safety, industrial, materials science, mechanical, nuclear, petroleum, soil science, and solar engineering.
- Includes active standards as well as historical, redlined and withdrawn standards. Content is updated as standards are released.
- The Engineering Digital Library provides access to Standard Technical Papers and Symposia papers, journals, e-books, manuals, and data series.
- To access additional features, users can also register for an individual account by clicking on the register link on the top right of the screen.
- Technical Note: third party cookies must be allowed on your browser, in order to access content.
- ASTM Digital Engineering Library content (except Standards) is also available on the ASME platform.
- Permitted Uses
IEEE Xplore Digital Library This link opens in a new window
- Provides access to some of the world's most highly-cited publications in electrical engineering, computer science, and electronics.
- Limited to 50 simultaneous users.
- Permitted Uses
- Published by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers).
INSPEC This link opens in a new window
- Covers scientific and technical literature in physics and astronomy, electrical engineering and electronics, communications, computers and control, mechanical and production engineering, and information technology.
- Content includes journals, conference proceedings, preprints, reports, books, patents, dissertations, standards, patents, videos, trade journals and consumer magazines, dating back to 1969.
Compendex This link opens in a new window
- A comprehensive bibliographic database of scientific and technical engineering research, covering all engineering disciplines.
- Comprises journals, conference proceedings, dissertations, standards, books, and recently preprints sourced from thousands of publishers from around the world, including major engineering societies such as IEEE, ASME, SAE and ACM.
- Coverage: 1970-present