For those of you that are in engineering positions, particularly Process or Manufacturing Engineering, how often do you refer to your old textbooks? Does a change in your job (i.e., new position) change this answer?
I’m in the middle of moving and want to know if I should hold on to these due to limited space.
Thanks,
indieFan
I would say hang on to them…if we were still in the pre-internet era…but nowadays, it’s pretty easy to find out just about anything you need to know from the comfort of your computer.
i would say hang on to them. a computer may not be available at the time of something. I know i have a certificate in powersports performance and repair from a few years ago, i still have those college books.
The folks I’m consulting with have textbooks all over the place – and reference them pretty frequently from what I’ve seen. They’re probably worth keeping around, even if they are a colossal pain to move from place to place.
I’ve been a bit amazed at how frequently I’ve been checking references for the work I’m consulting on – though most of my questions are pretty quickly answered by a search on the internet.
I would keep them. Some charts, tables, and figures are just not yet found, not easily found, or not very good on the internet.
I have all of mine on a bookshelf in my cubicle at work. I frequently refer to them, and other engineers come and borrow them. I even have a signout sheet for them, as they sometimes do not come back right away!
In my office I keep most of mine that relate to what I work on and even have bought new ones as necessary for reference when I need them. Also a PE exam reference manual is good to have as a basin guide for a lot of info.
It depends on what you’re working on. I’m a design engineer and the only text book I have at work is my GD&T book. Other than that, no one else has any text books at all (lucky me that I moved across country with all of them just to sit on my bookshelf at home). However, if you’re going into an analysis or control systems position, I would suggest holding on to them. I know a lot of people in those departments that use their text books frequently.
~Christina
I have about half of my books at home and the rest at work. Last week I brought two books (including my PE reference guide) from home to work because I need them for something I am working on. Those two particular books are also useful for robotics stuff so they travel more than most.
I find text books are in many ways more useful than the Internet. For one thing the references are static. When I write a report and cite an “allowable” value, if it is questioned I can turn right to the page. The internet is fluid and information sources are of differing reliability. Do you really want to have to say in court that you used a certain value you obtained from the internet to design something that broke and caused a liability issue? It is much better to be able to open a book and point to the number. (You do remember to cite your references, right?) “Doing it by the book” is not a perfect answer to liability issues, but it sure improves your credibility, especially when you can point out that thousands of engineers have been trained using the same book.
Another advantage is I tend to “see” the item I’m looking for in a book. I might not be able to tell you the page number, but I will be able to tell you the equation is in the bottom right hand corner of the right page and there is a fancy graph on the left side. That and a quick perusal of the table of contents to find the relevant chapter to get a page range and I can usually find what I’m looking for in a few minutes. This all assumes you actually know what is in the books.
I do the same thing with the internet, but due to it’s fluidity the references tend to disappear on me, or the page gets reformated. Remembering where to find something on a webpage that no longer exists is pretty useless. Yes I know there are ways to dig through archives, but I usually don’t remember enough about the page I’m remembering to track it down.
I must admit that what I use most in textbooks is the tables and graphs, though occasionally I’ll have to look up a formula or a computation method. Over the years I have used textbooks covering Static, Dynamics, Fluids, Machine Design, Thermo, and Heat Transfer and of course the PE Reference guide has most of these in it in a shortened form.
It only takes about 3 or 4 fileboxes to hold all my textbooks, a mere drop in the bucket compared to the rest of the library. I have thought about tossing the notebooks with all my homework in them. Those are several more boxes and I have trouble getting anything useful out of them. But about every other year or so I do find somehing useful and I’m glad I haven’t yet.
I refer to some of my 20-year-old engineering textbooks (mainly Control Theory, but also Signal Processing) fairly regularly. I teach math at a junior college (something I never thought I’d do 20 years ago) after having earned an EE (something I shouldn’t have done 20 years ago). In classes ranging from refresher arithmetic to calculus, I frequently am asked, “When would anyone ever actually USE parabolas, complex fractions/the quadratic equation /polynomial fractions /LaPlace Transforms?” I then drag out my old textbooks and read them some word problems on satellite dishes, feedback/wheelchair design, resonance/bridge stability, and bandpass filters. While the equations are a bit advanced for them, they can at least get a sense of how math is really used.
The outdated technical books without good word problems have been used as gag gifts by my son. A number of friends have received a book on PNP transisistors, approximation theory, or multivariate analysis with a gift card inside. The older, more esoteric sounding they are, the better. For one book with particularly outdated, obscure material, we cut out a space in the pages which was the right size for a Nintendo handheld (try taking THAT to the doctor’s office).
I have tried googling to find good word problems but have been largely unsuccessful. I may be searching for the wrong things, but I usually can’t seem to get quite what I’m looking for.
In classes ranging from refresher arithmetic to calculus, I frequently am asked, “When would anyone ever actually USE parabolas, complex fractions/the quadratic equation /polynomial fractions /LaPlace Transforms?”
You really shouldn’t scare them because with electrical engineering you probably would be using all those concepts at the same time plus some linear algebra just for fun.
I am more on the R&D side of things, but I do use my text books some times. In fact, I have a fun heat transfer problem now and I wish I kept my Thermodynamics book in my cube.
So basically, box up your text books now and move them to your cube (or office) when you get there. You don’t want an empty cube!
I’m always looking at my materials book, but I always keep these books on my desk:
Physics for Engineers
Mechanical Vibrations
Engineering Mechanics (statics & dynamics)
Engineering problem solving with MatLab
Human Factors in Engineering & Design
Science & Engineering of Materials
I’m in R&D and get tasked to build things for other people. I like having my books at my desk at work and would refer to one of them at least once a day.
erin
I refer to some of mine maybe a few times a year, others have been lost or given away.
The thing about textbooks, especially in this Internet age, is that they are authoratative and explanatory. They can be counted on for correctness (and not some wikipedia drivel*) and the go into pretty good explanations of how something is, so you can remmeber what you ahve since forgotten (they ate learning tools, after all). Not so the Internet in every case.
Don
*Not to say that Wikipedia is drivel, but we all know that inaccuracies can enter the flow. When it really matters (e.g. life-critical), Wikipedia isn’t usually a valid source.
Absolutely keep them. In every job I’ve had since leaving college I’ve used my text books. Not the the books from general courses like calculus, physics, or literature which I sold a long time ago, but I have used almost everything from my upper level courses.
I especially hold on to and frequently consult books about electronics, statistics and signals. It isn’t necessary to know everything, just know how to find it out.
In every job I’ve worked it was far more important to make as few mistakes as possible rather than do things off the top of the head. When someone makes a simple mistake because they didn’t look something up, or didn’t double check their work, that slows down an entire team, and makes a boss and teammates angry because it amounts to being lazy or cocky.
~Phil
I’ve kept my books. Then again I also annotated them while I was in college taking the classes so I could go back years later and re-proof the equations if I needed to. I’d rather have them than the internet any day since finding credible and clear information on the internet is … not so easy sometimes.
Thanks for the good advice; I’m heading off to college in a few weeks and I’ll be sure to keep my books now.
I, too, hang on to old textbooks for educational purposes. After studying (to use the term rather loosely) engineering for several years I moved into teaching tech studies at the high school level. Pulling out the old PDE texts every now and then gives my students going into Engineering an idea of what they have to look forward to!
I also find that the old texts are sometimes a quicker reference than the web if they are handy… because I know where to look in them.
They also serve as excellent weights for holding things in place and give my bookshelf a distinguished look.
Jason
Hang on to as many as you can for as long as you can - you don’t know now what you’ll be working on in five years. I go back to my comm systems, control theory and circuit theory books regularly (I’m a radio integrated circuit designer by trade). I haven’t completely stopped taking classes or buying new texts, so my collection is still growing after 20 years in the field. What I do find is that I refer to the newer books more often than most older ones, because they’re the most relevant to what I’m currently working on.
On the other hand, it’s not the worst thing in the world if you do jettison a book and find you need it later. Other engineers will have their books in their offices, so you can usually borrow what you need, or go out and buy an updated edition of what you had or something by another author for yourself.
Maybe the best thing is to plan on keeping everything for your first four or five years out of school, then start weeding out the ones you’re least likely to need (this is almost exclusively prompted by an office or company move, btw). Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to clear some space on a bookshelf…anybody want a 23 year old (and way, way obsolete) microwave devices text?
Steve Janesch