Study Guides: Product Design: Academic Sources

What are academic sources?

Academic sources include:

Academic books - provides broad overviews of a topic
Journal articles - contain information about specific aspects within a topic area

Books & journal articles are written by researchers and experts & are suitable to use for your university studies.

Library catalogue

UTS Library has a large collection of books & journals and more. Search the Library Catalogue to find academic books & journal articles. Watch the video to learn how.

Library Catalogue The Library Catalogue is a good place to start your search. You can find many different information types in the one search.

Databases

Academic databases are large collections of academic books, book chapters, journal articles and more.

Design databases

These are databases that focus on information on the design aspects of product design.

ProQuest the Arts A database for books, journal articles and more, covering the subjects of art, design, social science & music.
Design and Applied Arts Index The DAAI had research, news & conference papers on design, industrial design & craft
Art & Architecture Complete This database has thousands of journals & images on design and architecture.

Materials science databases

Try these databases for information related to different materials & material technologies to do with product design.

ScienceDirect ScienceDirect has journal article content in areas such as industrial & building materials (e.g. passive thermal design).
Wiley Online Library Find books and articles in the area of science.
Materials science & Engineering Collection This ProQuest database will have information on materials, computing and design from an engineering perspective.
INSPEC Access to scientific and technical papers in physics, electrical engineering, electronics, communications, control engineering, computing, information technology, manufacturing and production engineering

Search tips

What do you do when you're not getting the results you want from your search?

Browse books

You can also find books on product design on the shelves in the Library. Browsing the shelves is a great way to discover books that you wouldn't have found otherwise.