I recently attended the American Society of Engineering Education conference, held right here in Baltimore. It’s a great opportunity to network and learn, especially with division groups for every type of engineering professional or student providing workshops, sessions, and papers. New this year is an engineering job fair.
With hundreds of potential sessions and panels scheduled, I chose to focus on those hosted by the Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation Division and the Engineering Libraries Division. One titled “Addressing Business Research Needs in the Engineering Curriculum” provided the best of both worlds and was the result of the collaborative work of the business and engineering faculty of the Cornell University Library. They recognized that these disciplines often intersected and engineers needed specialized library instruction to improve their business and leadership skills to benefit their professional lives beyond graduation. Another perk of joining these division groups is that they often share fun events at conferences. One evening, IEEE hosted a cocktail hour hour for engineering librarians at the National Aquarium. In addition to networking with colleagues from all over the U.S., I saw some very cool aquatic animals!
Librarians do more than providing full text access, we also help students and faculty research standards, look up patents, find statistics on a market size, search funding, locate medical information, connect users with expert industry analyses and much, much more. Check out the Engineering Guide, compiled by JHU’s engineering librarians for more information. Our Entrepreneurship Guide is there to assist aspiring entrepreneurs or intrapraneurs (those who innovate within their place of employment) with business ideation and commercialization. A group of business librarians are able to assist any Hopkins’ students, including those studying engineering, with finding the data they need to bring their idea to market. Reach out to us at businesslib@lists.jh.edu.