Standards
Standards are agreed-upon
specifications and guidelines for the performance, operation or composition
of a product or process. Regulatory agencies create standards that have
legal weight; other organizations create standards that are adopted voluntarily
because they provide a means of correlating measures and create a common
ground. Engineers need to consult the appropriate standards when they create
new products, processes or designs.
Below is an example of a portion
of IEEE Standard 802-1990: "IEEE Standard for Local and Metropolitan Area
Networks: Overview and Architecture." While
all standards do not have the same components,
most standards do begin with a "scope" or "scope and purpose" section that
explains the purpose and content of the standard.
Finding
Standards:
Key organizations that issue
standards in engineering include the American
Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) and the American
National Standards Institute (ANSI).
-
The ASTM creates its own standards and has published
over 9,000 standards that include information on such topics as working
with metals, chemical products, electronics and plastics.
-
ANSI, on the other hand, brings together standards
from several different engineering associations including the American
Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the International Standards Organization
(ISO), the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), the Underwriters' Laboratories
(UL), and the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning
Engineers (ASHRAE).
- The full text of standards is
available on both the ASTM and the ANSI Web sites, as well as on the sites
of the individual organizations whose standards are
published by ANSI. Accessing the full text of
these standards from the Web requires you to purchase a membership in the
database or to pay to have the hard copy of the standard sent to you. (The
fees range from about $60 for some individual standards to thousands of
dollars for a membership.)
Fortunately, the Bevier Engineering
Library and the Carnegie Library
of Pittsburgh provide the full text to most standards available from
ASTM and ANSI in paper format. The Annual Book of ASTM Standards is available
at the Engineering Library and ANSI standards are available at the Carnegie
Public Library's main branch in Oakland. To find an individual standard,
consult the paper indexes to the standards in each library. You can also
search the ASTM and ANSI Web sites to find the titles and brief citations
to the standards you need, then look the standards up by their numbers
in the paper volumes.
Links to other organizations
that issue standards can be found under "Standards" on the Engineering
Subject Guide.
