What is product information?

Product information is factual data about raw materials and finished, engineered goods. Whereas a university library will be full of information about the theory and principles of Engineering, the practising engineer will always need specific information about the items or materials involved in engineering. This information is typically provided by the firm producing the items or materials as part of the process of marketing them. So product catalogues and trade literature are excellent sources of this sort of product information.

Why use product information?

This data is valuable, firstly, because engineers always need to use raw materials and  finished products in their own design and manufacturing work. But perhaps more importantly, they also need to create their own products and product designs. Seeing how existing similar products are made is a good way of doing this. Product information thus is an excellent way of feeding the engineer with the knowledge needed to make things that work and things that sell.

Limitations of product information

Companies' own product catalogues are always going to be informative but inevitably they are biased - product catalogues are technically dense advertisements favouring only the products' good points. Furthermore, the product information found in product catalogues, trade literature, handbooks, data sheets and annual reports and reviews, is a very disparate type of information that is poorly standardised and difficult for libraries to collect in a comprehensive way - product information is thus a type of "grey literature", which is difficult to assemble into collections. Narrowly focused collections of hard copy product information in individual firms' own libraries are often better than anything found in public or university libraries, but discovering their existence is hard and getting access to such an in-house library even harder.

How to find product information

Product information can be found in a variety of sources, two of which are discussed elsewhere in this module - standards and patents. As noted above, traditional printed product information has always been difficult to use and access. The diffuse nature of product-related information types was a problem waiting for the birth of the Internet to solve. Product catalogues are now increasingly available for order over the web via a company's web site, or even available in full-text on the WWW.

Try the US-based techsavvy.com site for online access to product "catalogs", parts inventories, specifications and company information. Related material such as house journals, which tend to highlight new products rather than existing products, are available cheaply or even for free on request. Free house journals have migrated easily onto the web- for example, have a look at GEC Review. Information provider companies such as Technical Indexes, who provide Glasgow University Library's British Standards CD-ROM service, also provide valuable collections of product data - Strathclyde University has a version of TI's Engineering Product Library, which is a networked CD-ROM service.

Further information

Strathclyde University Library product information page.

The Thomas register is a typical well-produced commercial US product information web site.

The US government's  NTIS (National Technical Information Service) site.