Guides & Tutorials: Applied Science: Find Standards

Why Standards Matter

Standards are published documents that establish specifications and procedures designed to ensure the reliability of the materials, products, methods, and/or services people use every day.

Standards can help us:

better understand the required specifications for products
ensure products, systems, services behave reliably and safely
learn how something works (treat standards as “how-to” instructions)
meet safety criteria required by law

Where to Find Standards

PolyU eligible users can access the full text of standards from the following subscribed databases. Watch our previous workshop training (Handout) which demonstrated how to find standards from ACCURIS Engineering Workbench and British Standards Online.

ASTM Compass
provides full access to technical standards, books, journals and technical reports published by American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM). It also covers standards co-developed by ISO and BSI.
British Standards Online (BSOL)
provides full access to British Standards (BSI) and other international standards adopted as British Standards.
IEEE Xplore
provides full text access to IEEE journals, transactions, letters, magazines and conference proceedings, IET journals and conference proceedings, and IEEE Standards.
ACCURIS Engineering Workbench (formerly IHS)
formerly IHS, is a consolidated platform to provide access to the worldwide standards released by 400+ standard developing organizations. Including AATCC, ANSI, ASHRAE, ASME, CIE, JIS(JSA), NFPA and UL.

More details about coverage of standards on each platform, no. of concurrent users, and specific requirements for opening the downloaded files. Navigate to individual pages to learn how to find standards in each database.

Database	Standards Coverage (in PolyU's Subscription)	No. of Concurrent Users	Protected PDF files (FileOpen plug-in required)
ASTM Compass	ASTM	Unlimited
British Standards Online (BSOL)	BS ISO IEC*	Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited	✓ ✓ ✓
IEEE Xplore	IEEE	Unlimited
ACCURIS Engineering Workbench (formerly IHS)	AATCC ANSI ASHRAE ASME CIE JIS(JSA) NFPA UL	Unlimited 1 Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited 3 Unlimited 1

*Only those that have been adopted as British Standards

Other Channels to Find Standards

Not Available in our online databases? Try searching the hard copies.

Some print copies of standards from ASTM, BS, IEC, ISO, DIN and ANSI are also available upon request. Browser the print collection of standards via OneSearch or search through OneSearch directly.

Sign in to OneSearch to place the request online. The delivery usually takes 2-3 days. You will be notified by email when the requested documents arrive. The loan period for the print standard is 6 hours.

Note: This service is limited to PolyU students and staff only.

国家标准全文公开系统
Developed by the Standardization Administration of China (SAC; Chinese: 国家标准委), this website provides free access to some of the National Standards of the People’s Republic of China, i.e. Guobiao (国标) or GB Standards.

Not Available in Library collection? Suggest us to buy it.

Suggest a purchase ("Books") if the required standard is not available in our collection. We will check with the vendor the circulation policies of requested standard. Usually, we will buy the hard copy and keep it in the closed stack at Loan & Return Counter (P/F) for loan. The loan period for the hard copy standard is 6 hours.

Note: This service is limited to PolyU students and staff only.