Acoustical Engineering & Noise Study Guide: sources @ SIBL

Getting Started

Acoustical engineering seeks to improve the quality of sound and reduce noise. It concerns:

building design and building materials
noise control
environmental regulations
speech
hearing
music
sound recording, broadcast and reproduction

Acoustics and its applications often involve several different disciplines, so you may need to do your research within multiple subject areas, and even in different library locations. For example, in The New York Public Library many books and journals about musical acoustics are held at the Performing Arts Library, a research library that holds materials on music and musicians. The collections here at the Science, Industry & Business Library (SIBL) are strong on theory, research, noise control and building design, as well the technology of sound recording.

Getting started: books you can borrow. With a New York Public Library Branch Libraries card you can check out many introductory books on acoustics from the open shelves in the street-level circulating library at SIBL (the Cullman Room). Browse the shelves or search the LEO catalog on the computers. Ask the librarian at the desk if you need help. The books available include:

Acoustics in the built environment : advice for the design team. Duncan Templeton (editor) ... [et al.]. 690.2 A England : ARCHITECTURAL PRESS (UK), 1997. Basic technical advice on building acoustics, sound system design and sound proofing for the practical builder.

Theoretical acoustics. Philip McCord Morse, Princeton University Press, c1986. 534 M

Practical acoustics. Stephen Kamichik, Prompt Publications, c1998. 621.3828 K Practical projects in acoustics for the amateur or professional.

Introduction to the physics and psychophysics of music. Roederer, Juan G., Springer-Verlag, c1975. 781.22 R

Numbers in bold are ‘call numbers’ for locating books on the shelves and you may find similar titles in the same general shelf location.

There is an excellent web site on acoustics at http://acoustics.org maintained by the Acoustical Society of America. It contains articles, information, lists of resources and web links. Another good introductory site emphasizing building acoustics is http://acoustics.com

Going deeper into acoustics, but still at an introductory level, you can find non-technical articles on acoustics in science encyclopedias on the open shelves in the lower-level Salomon Reading Room. In particular, the 10-volume McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (call number *R-SIBL Q121 .M3, look for the shelf marked ‘Q’) has excellent introductory articles under Acoustics, Architectural Acoustics, Bioacoustics, and Acoustics Noise. You can photocopy articles at the library for personal use. Or search the electronic version of the same encyclopedia, called AccessScience, in the library’s Electronic Information Center (also on the lower level). A search under the word ‘acoustics’ brings up over 300 articles you can print, save to disc or e-mail to yourself.

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