Mechanical Engineering (ME) : Technical Reports

How to Find a Specific Technical Report

I have a technical report reference and want to find the report.

Check the Library Catalog first – it will give an exact call number and location for many reports in print or provide a link to the report online.
Note the catalog call number and the exact location in the microfiche collection. If the report is located at the Middleton Shelving Facility, you can place a request to have it delivered to a campus library.

Don’t give up if you don’t find the report in the catalog – we have many reports in microfiche that are not listed. Ask a librarian for help.

Where else should I look?

Search NTRL (National Technical Reports Library) to get more details for a reference that you already have. Make a note of all numbers found in the record. View this picture for more information.
Search other specialized technical report databases. Many government-sponsored databases include the full text of records.

What if a technical report isn't online? How can I find out if it's available on campus?

Check the microfiche cabinets at Memorial Library. Look for any report number given in the reference you have.

Technical reports have many different numbering systems, such as report numbers, accession numbers, or SuDoc numbers. Materials are filed under all these systems as one big alphabet. Here's an example of how the filing works:

C21.2:P27

C55.214:

CONF-9303105

COO-4076-2

DOE/NV/10451-T1

Definition

What is a Technical Report?

Technical reports publish the results of scientific or technical research, often using federal funds. The research is performed and reports are produced by companies, universities and government laboratories. Most technical reports housed on campus were written under contract to U.S. government agencies.

Tech Report Resources

See a comprehensive list of technical report databases in the Database Library

DTIC Online
Citations to unclassified unlimited documents entered into the Defense Technical Information Center's Technical Reports Collection from 1974 to present. Also offers full text documents September 1998 to present. If full text is not available for a desired report, contact a librarian. We can request a digitized copy for you.

HathiTrust
A digitized collection of thousands of publications from the CIC libraries (Big Ten) and the University of California System. Full-text scans of works that are out of copyright or in the public domain are available for viewing or searching, including thousands of technical reports digitized in partnership with TRAIL (Technical Report Archive & Image Library).

National Service Center for Environmental Publications (NSCEP)
NSCEP is a database of more than 35,000 full-text EPA documents from the early 1990's to the present.

NTRL National Technical Reports Library NTIS National Technical Information Service (via NTIS)
NTRL (National Technical Reports Library) offers a public interface for accessing authenticated government technical reports in the U.S. Department of Commerce NTIS (National Technical Information Service) database. The National Technical Information Service is a large central resource for U.S. government-funded scientific, technical, engineering, and business related information. The database of more than 3 million publications provides links to over 800,000 full-text technical reports in 350 subject areas. Over 195,000 brief records have been added for pre-1964 information.

NTRS: NASA Technical Report Server
Thousands of research reports created or sponsored by NASA and its predecessor NACA (1915-1958), as well as images and videos from NIX (the discontinued NASA Image eXchange). The database gives access to aerospace-related citations, full-text online documents, images, and videos. The types of information include: conference papers, journal articles, meeting papers, patents, research reports, images, movies, and technical videos – scientific and technical information (STI).

OSTI.GOV: Office of Scientific and Technical Information
OSTI.GOV is a portal to free, publicly-available U.S. Department of Energy-sponsored R&D results including technical reports, bibliographic citations, journal articles, conference papers, books, multimedia, software, and data information, and was developed by the DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information. The Database provides access to DOE publicly available citations from 1948 through the present, with most providing links to full text. OSTI.GOV provides access to all the information previously available in SciTech Connect, DOE Information Bridge, and Energy Citations Database.

SAE Digital Library (Society of Automotive Engineers)
The SAE Digital Library is a repository of technical content for all forms of vehicle technology: land, sea, air and space. The database contains full text technical papers from 1906 to the present. International papers are represented by abstracts only. Any SAE technical papers not available in full text can be requested through Interlibrary Loan. The SAE DL also contains information on SAE standards. See this page on how to retrieve standards for more information.

TRID TRIS Online (Transportation Research Information Services)
Over 1 million records on transportation research with some full text. TRID is an integrated database that combines the records from TRB’s Transportation Research Information Services (TRIS) Database and the OECD’s Joint Transport Research Centre’s International Transport Research Documentation (ITRD).

More on Technical Reports

See the Technical Reports Research Guide for more information on technical reports.

Request a Copy

It looks like this technical report isn't available online or in print on campus. How can I get it?

Use the UW Libraries' Interlibrary Loan service.

Use the "Request a Book" form
Enter any report numbers in the Comments box