Guides & Tutorials: Fashion, Textiles and Clothing: 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 subscribed by the Library. Here are some useful standard sites for SFT:

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.
IHS Engineering Workbench
provides full access to technical standards, including AATCC, ANSI, ASME, JIS(JSA), NFPA.

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	✓ ✓ ✓
IHS Engineering Workbench	AATCC ANSI ASME JIS(JSA) NFPA	3 1 1 3 3

*Only those that have been adopted as British Standards