Standards

A standard is a publication that sets down a defined level of quality and performance for products to be measured against. The only sizeable collection of standards in the library system is of British Standards, a very incomplete set, which is held in the Queen's Building Library. Other branches have few if any of this type of publication.

• To find out whether a British Standard is in the Queen’s Building Library collection you should consult the online Library Catalogue. However, please note, the catalogue does not contain many pre-1978 items in the collection, for this you will be best served by browsing the shelves.
   
• The location and loan periods of standards depend on the branch.

The 'Material type--Standards' category on MetaLib (easily accessed via the Quick search > Articles & databases option of the Library home page) gives you access to ASTM standards, and to British Standards Online, which allows you to search for details of British Standards, and to access the full-text standards that the University of Bristol subscribes to (denoted by a pdf icon).  Currently, the University of Bristol subscribes to five modules on British Standards Online  (Testing; Energy & Heat Transfer Engineering; Electrical Engineering in General; Construction in General; and Civil Engineering) representing approximately 4,400 full-text standards.

If you would like to see a standard that is not held by the library you should consider using the Inter-Library Loan service, or contacting lib-engineering@bristol.ac.uk in the first instance.

Another way of tracking down information on standards is to go to the website of the issuing body. Links to the major standards issuing bodies worldwide are available on a page set up for the International Oil and Gas industry.

The Central Library on College Green (the largest of Bristol's public libraries) no longer holds British Standards.