Product: EndNote version 3 for Windows
Author: Gord McKenna, PEng, PGeol
Senior
Geotechnical Engineer and graduate student. Syncrude Canada Ltd
Discipline: Geotechnical Engineer
Contact: 199 Berens Place Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada T9K 2C6
Working
full-time at an oil sands mine in Northern Canada and part time on a
PhD in Civil Engineering at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, some
300 miles to the south, I need help.
I travel
to Edmonton on business once or twice a month and often have a couple
of hours to swing by the university library. The old five story building
is hot and stuffy and its floors have long since yellowed. But it has
a wonderful collection. I need to be able to get in and out of the library
quickly, with the articles and books I need to tide me over until I
next come to town.
I am a
geotechnical engineer, a form of civil engineer that works with the
ground -- foundations, slopes, landslides, erosion and the like. But
I've found that to meet some of the lofty goals for creating sustainable
landscapes from the mined out pits and hills of overburden we create,
a new discipline is needed -- landscape engineering. My thesis work
is to develop this new interdisciplinary discipline, and show how it
can be used to solve some of the pressing challenges.
The topics
that especially interest me, erosion of clay and water seepage through
sand, have been dealt with by the geographers, engineers, soil scientists,
hydrologists, geologists, and even the archaeologists, each in some
detail for a decade or more within the last sixty years -- and most
of it is good work, still as valuable today as the day it was written.
The trick then is to find and read hundreds of papers and books generated
by these scientists and engineers -- looking for clues from other disciplines that can be adapted for general use by the landscape engineer. And to do this 300 miles from the nearest university library.
So you
can imagine my delight when I stumbled across EndNote 3.0 for Windows
95 on the internet last year. At first I thought it was just a good
database that I could key punch my references into and be able to export
them in several different formats. Then I found the power of being able
to hook up to the internet and search libraries -- and in particular,
the University of Alberta.
So now,
during those long cold winter nights, I put another log on the fire,
sit in front of my computer, and work through the university archives,
selecting books that would be useful to my research. I mark under notes
the ones that I need, and their priority. I keep a printout in my briefcase
so that I when I have an hour or two in Edmonton, I can make good use
of it -- I can spend my time at the stacks and the photocopier, and
return home with another couple of dozen references. It makes my time
there very efficient.
And if
the UofA doesn't have the book or journal I need, I can look at other
libraries to find who does, capture the reference without typing it
in, and put it on my "to get" list. Right from my home.
At home,
I can store my notes with the EndNote file, then as I write up each
section, search through EndNote to call up the relevant files, scan
them, pull the papers out again if necessary. It runs as smooth as it
sound. And it means I can do a more thorough job faster. And ultimately,
I hope it helps lead to reclaimed landscapes that will perform even
better.
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