EVERY PEER REVIEWED technical paper published by the UK’s Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) since 1836 is now available on the internet for immediate download from a new virtual library site. The cost is US$7 a paper for members and US$21 for non- members.
Containing more than 20,000 illustrated papers, the site at www.iceknowledge.com, is designed to be one of the industry’s most comprehensive on-line archives in the world.
‘With much of the world’s Victorian and pre-war infrastructure coming to the end of its useful life, the archive is expected to provide an invaluable, rapid resource for civil engineers planning refurbishment or replacement projects,’ said Leon Heward-Mills of ICE publishing company Thomas Telford. ‘Even for more recent works, the archive may well prove to be the only source of reliable, as-built data.’
Scanning in over 200,000 pages – including thousands of foldout drawings – into high resolution, fully searchable, PDF files has taken nearly a year to complete.
The archive currently extends from 1836-1998 and covers all refereed papers, discussions and meeting reports published in the various manifestations of the ICE Proceedings, which is currently published as six separate quarterly, peer-reviewed journals. Papers from the current and past three years are only accessible on-line to current journal subscribers but will be added to the archive on an annual basis.
Users can search by author, date, region, country, keyword or words in the title to locate papers on-line. Payment can be made on-line with a credit card and users have up to 28 days to download each paper paid for.