What are standards?

Standards are documented agreements containing technical specifications or other precise criteria to be used as rules, guidelines, or definitions, in order to make sure that materials, products, processes and services are fit for purpose.

Online

New Zealand Standards and joint Australia/New Zealand standards are available from Standards New Zealand. If you're looking for a superseded or withdrawn standard, make sure to change the "status" drop-down menu to "All" when searching.

ASTM standards are available in IHS Standards Expert.  When doing a Document Number Search, omit the year part of the standard number (eg just search for D1426, not D1426-08). It will come up with the full pdf.

IEEE standards are available in IEEE Xplore.

The NFPA National Fire Codes are available from the National Fire Codes service.

In print

Many Australian standards (AS) and British standards (BS), and some international standards (ISO etc) are held in EPS Library. Some of these are listed in the Library catalogue but not all, so if you can't find what you're looking for please ask us!

Strict copyright regulations apply to all standards. Most standards are available as 3-hour loans but some are reference only.

Other search engines

We may not hold the standards published by these organisations, but if you need one for your research check with us - we may be able to order it.

• SAI Global - search for standards from over 360 publishers
• American National Standards Institute (ANSI)
• Standards Australia (AS)
• British Standards (BS)
• International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC)
• International Organization for Standardization (ISO)