As a technical school, BCIT has a fairly good collection of standardized tests. The tests are pretty pricey to get on your own, so it is best to always check with the school library first. Each test ranges from $36 to over $120 for ANSI publications; which means they are costlier than even research journal articles.* Test standards also tend to cross-reference one another, which means that you often need to check a bunch of them at a time… this can really add up. Tallying the would-be costs really helps me realize at a deeper level what amazing resource school libraries are. This appreciation helps me stay calm and grateful though the sometimes arduous, time-consuming hunts for papers and test standards (yes, even with help from wizard-like librarians!).
If you are ever curious what these standards (e.g. ASTM) look like, you can take a look at them in BCIT’s Burnaby library. The librarians are usually more than happy to show you where these are; they want students make more use of them as this is a very expensive resource. I was pretty blown away the first time I saw these things (as I was when I first saw the ASHRAE Handbook of Fundamentals, to be discussed in a future post). If you cannot find the standard you need at our library, you can get them from other university libraries via the inter-library loan system.
*Research journal articles are another ultra-important source of knowledge at the graduate level. You will need them when writing papers of your own and doing contextual research (literature review) to prepare any type of research or investigative work. Papers are usually available by subscription in monthly volumes of 100 (+/- another 100) papers. Check with your department for this resource. If the papers you are looking for isn’t available for free or accessible as an academic resource, then individual papers cost about $30-$35 a pop. Research journal articles are consumed in very high volumes in academia… it is an art to find, use, and later on, write them properly.