Reference sheets

If you have citation information for a specific ASME document, use the following procedure to retrieve the full text.

1. Check for online availability through the ASME Digital Collection. ASME is continually increasing the amount of material available online.
2. If the material is not online, you may request the document from Interlibrary Loan. If we have the item in our collection, Interlibrary Loan will scan the item and send it to you as a PDF. If we do not have the document in our collection, Interlibrary Loan will seek it from another university and when found, will send it to you electronically.
3. If you want to retrieve print format material from our collection, see the sections below, which give details about ASME technical papers, journal articles, standards, and books.

It is generally not good to limit a subject search to only one publisher. Doing so excludes other publishers who have information on the topic. However, if you wish to limit your search to only ASME documents, there are three main ways to search.

1. Documents can be searched directly at the ASME Digital Collection site. The indexing at the ASME site does not currently go back further than the 1960s.
2. Compendex from Engineering Village covers the ASME publications, and began indexing in 1884. It is possible to limit searches to specific publishers or specific journals.
3. Paper indexes also exist for the older papers, including the Seventy-seven year index: technical papers, 1880-1956. The call number is TJ1 A774.

The ASME Technical Papers are published by numerous divisions of the ASME. All of these papers have been presented at conferences. Selected technical papers are published in various journals of the ASME.

Until 2002, Virginia Tech received the ASME Technical Papers from two subscriptions: the ASME Technical Papers package and the ASME conference proceedings. The Technical Papers package contained papers presented at conferences which did not have their own published conference proceedings. These divisions, such as GT (Gas Turbine), sent individual conference papers to us which we arranged alphabetically according to the sponsoring division, bound, and placed in the stacks under TJ7 A4 for each year of publication. The conference proceedings subscription contained papers from divisions such as ICE (Internal Combustion Engines), which published their proceedings each year, and which we placed in our collection under various call numbers.

In 2002, the ASME Technical Papers package ceased. From 2003 - 2005, VT received scattered ASME technical papers through our conference proceedings subscription. In 2005 we began receiving all ASME Technical Papers published each year as part of a comprehensive ASME Conference Proceedings plan. In 2013 we began receiving Technical Papers as part of an online ASME package, and ceased getting them in hardcopy.

In 2016, we purchased perpetual archival access to the Technical / Conference papers presented from 2002 – 2007. This purchase filled the gap in our holdings described above. Because our print holdings for some of these years were incomplete, the few print holdings we had were discarded.

To summarize

• Pre-2002 – technical / conference papers are only available in print format.
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• 2002 – 2007 – technical / conference papers are only available online through the ASME Digital Collection.
• 2008 – 2012 – technical / conference papers are available in both print and online formats through the ASME Digital Collection.
• 2013 – present- technical / conference papers are only available online through the ASME Digital Collection.

Because of the various ways we've received the papers there is no single way that the papers can be retrieved from the collection.

For any papers published in 2002 or later, by far the easiest way to obtain the full text is through the online ASME Digital Collection. Search for the paper directly at the ASME site.