Engineering Terms and Data Sources - starting to include engineering data sources as well.
Sources of Information- a repository with a focus on open access papers, technical reports etc., such as Libretexts.
Data sources - some links to open and public databases and datasets, such as the Office for National Statistics and other data portals, e.g. for the UN SDGs.

Engineering Terms

Below is list of texts you can use to determine the meaning behind a catalogue of engineering terms that you will encounter during your course

Mechanical Engineer's Pocketbook, by Roger Timings, part of Newnes Pocket Book series,
The Electrical Engineering Handbook
Mark's Standard Handbook (4 Volume Set)
Handbook of Mechanical Engineering
Machinery's Handbook 31st Edition
Engineers' Data Book, by Clifford Matthews, IMechE.
BOSCH Automotive Handbook - free PDF: https://www.scribd.com/document/575688940/BOSCH-Automotive-Handbook-2022

Some of the above can be found in the ASK and in the Library.

Engineering data sources include Online Materials Information Resource - MatWeb (thanks Frank G-W! but he warns you might need to make an account) and see general data sources below.

Sources of Information

The following are a list of online and other sources of papers and technical reports which are free to access. Please share any that you might find!

Google Scholar is useful and extensive. Note that not all you find on here will be free to access, but items listed with a link added to the right on the page usually means that the link will take you to an freely available paper or report.

The IET provides its members with access to journals and technical reports: IET Digital Library: Home (theiet.org) and Database and eresource A-Z. All NMITE students can join the IET as student members for free - if you haven't yet registered, see the Chief Academic Officer to get registered.

Libretexts are a really good resource aimed at higher education, with different subject areas having “bookshelves” (mostly some kind of textbook), “Campus bookshelves” (usually courses from other HE institutions), and “Learning objects”. There is a section for “Engineering” but there is engineering in other sections (e.g. about renewable energy) so it is best to explore widely. The central hub https://libretexts.org/ is not too useful as the starting point, instead Pete Broks (thank you for this) suggests search for “Libretexts ”+ subject area, and he provided the following links to get started:

Engineering – Home - Engineering LibreTexts (go to Bookshelves and you will find further links to mechanical, electrical, civil, materials, industrial/systems, environmental…etc)
Maths - Home - Mathematics LibreTexts
Social sciences - Home - Social Sci LibreTexts
Humanities - Home - Humanities LibreTexts

Directory of Open Access Journals – DOAJ - this is a well established open access site to research journals.

Directory of Open Access Books (doabooks.org) - is the sister site to DOAJ.

OAPEN provides access to quality controlled open access books for libraries and researchers: https://library.oapen.org/

Elsevier's ScienceDirect.com | Science, health and medical journals, full text articles and books. offers open access journals.

EBSCO also offers some free access to data and papers here: Free Research Databases from EBSCO | Free Academic Databases

Free eBooks | Project Gutenberg - this provides access to classics and old books that are out of copyright. Can be useful!

The UK's Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) publish briefings and 1 page notes on various S&T topics: see Sourcing reliable and impartial scientific research for Parliament - POST, POSTbriefs and POSTnotes.

FINALLY, don't forget libraries, here at NMITE and the Herefordshire Libraries: in theory you can request interlibrary loans from anywhere in the UK, including the British Library BUT there is a charge and it can take some weeks to reach you: Joining and using your library – Herefordshire Council

WARNING: SciHub and other similar sites are known to be illegal sites sharing papers without permission. It is illegal in the UK to make use of these: see Police warn students to avoid science website - BBC News. If you come across a website and you are not sure if it is alright to use, please check in with the ASK as we can help you find out how legitimate it is and similarly how likely it is that the information it provides is robust and of a reasonable quality. Refer to Study Skills - Sourcing and Referencing for more on this.

Data Sources

UK Office for National Statistics is the definitive place to find all types of publicly available data for this country Home - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)

UK Government data is here: https://www.data.gov.uk/

Technical data sources include Kaggle: Your Machine Learning and Data Science Community

UN SDGs data - data portal for the United Nations 2030 Sustainability Development Goals - https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/dataportal

Google provides a portal to many databases and data sources: Google Public Data Explorer

Statista - Insights and facts across 170 industries and 150+ countries. Individuals can access data for free, plus 5 free AI powered queries per month! Statista - The Statistics Portal for Market Data, Market Research and Market Studies

Regions and membership of global bodies have extensive datasets as well as reports: links to data portals are given below, but also check for their reports:

for Lists of countries, continents and subregions – check Wikipedia for updated lists
Trading regions and allies: e.g. European Union, Mercosur, ASEAN, African Union, OECD, and also check out other global membership bodies such as NATO, OPEC, etc.
The World Bank databanks: DataBank | The World Bank

Data for Global metrics:

GDP and GNI – gross domestic/national income – https://data.worldbank.org
HDI – human development index – https://data.worldbank.org
Developing Countries s vs Least Developed Countries – https://www.un.org/ohrlls/content/list-ldcs (and SIDs and LLDCs)
GII – global innovation index https://www.wipo.int/portal/en
And lots more… please suggest any you find...

The World Economic Forum has this suggested list of big free databases: The free big data sources you should know | World Economic Forum (weforum.org) which includes Facebook and other interesting datasets.