Interlibrary Loan
Resources not owned by the Campbell University Libraries can be borrowed from other libraries through ILLiad, an interlibrary loan (ILL) system available to Campbell faculty, staff, and students as an aid to research and study. Request it through our Interlibrary Loan service and we will borrow it from another library. This service is free of cost. Please allow up to 4-5 days for book requests, and 2-3 days for articles.
Check out this online tutorial to learn how to use ILLiad.
What is a Standard?
Standards help clarify, guide and control processes and activities crucial to our everyday functioning and lives. In particular, they specify definitions, performance, and design criteria. They help create a common language with which engineers, researchers, businesses, and even students can communicate, create, and learn.
Standards can be voluntary or mandatory, and as technology and needs change, become superseded. They are created by industrial societies and government bodies, in the United States and in foreign countries. They are also numerous, and growing. Originally discussed by the LaQue report in 1961, the United States standards environment has been short on coordination and long on independent action among the standards issuing bodies. The situation is a little better today, but not much. Currently there are over 550 standards issuing bodies in the United States, as compared to 350 in 1961.
The rest of the world has also taken steps to improve the standards situation. After World War II, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) helped two fledgling international organizations, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), increase their role in the standards arena. Today international standards are an important and growing area as well, with over 7000 ISO standards alone.
Voluntary Standards |
Performance Specification Standards |
Definition Standards Standards that provide standard measurement, symbology or terminology are definition standards. These create a foundation on which many other standards can be created. The metric system is an example of a definition standard. |
Criteria Standards Criteria standards discuss how to go about an activity, kind of the "opposite" of a performance standard. Criteria standards set up recommendations considering certain aspects of an activity, such as bridge building, or a laboratory process. |
Mandatory Standards Those standards which are, in effect, laws. Failure to follow such standards would result in legal penalties and liability. They are generally adopted out of concern for safety, and promulgated by the Federal government or one of its agencies or departments. Codes are groups of standards on the same topic, generally created for government agencies, and thus mandatory standards. |
Superseded Standards Because quality, technology, and human needs change, standards are changed as well. Sometimes the area covered by the rules of a new standard must change to meet the new guidelines. Other times, only new activity must conform. Superseded standards provide information on how things used to be done, and provide valuable information when an older area of activity (like the capabilities of an old elevator or results from a lab using older reporting techniques) is being evaluated. |
Paul Grochowski
Grochowski, Paul & Leela Lalwani. "What is a Standard?" Standards LibGuide. University of Michigan Library. Accessed April 2017.
http://guides.lib.umich.edu/patents. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Changes made.