WebJunction

http://www.eric.ed.gov

Overview

“The word’s largest digital library of education literature” (sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Services) provides free access to more than 1.2 million bibliographic records of journal articles and other education-related materials and, if available, includes links to full text.

The ERIC collection includes citations, abstracts, and other pertinent data for items indexed since 1966, including:

• Journal articles

• Books

• Research syntheses

• Conference papers/proceedings

• Technical and research reports

• Policy papers

• Reviews and bibliographies

• Congressional hearings and reports

• Reports on federal/state standards, testing, and regulations

• Research reports

• U.S. Department of Education contractor reports

• Working papers from established research and policy organizations

• Other education-related materials

In addition, there is information on full text availability, including (currently and growing) more than 115,000 full text items in PDF format already in the database as of August 2007 and links to the OCLC WorldCat “Find in a Library” for many materials not available from ERIC. Most materials published from 2004 and forward include links to other sources, including publishers’ Web sites.

Features

• Searching (basic or advanced) with search tips: can search within results; specify sorting of results (relevance, publication date, title, author, source); save searches using My ERIC; save, view, email, or export searches using Clipboard

• List of journals (currently more than 600) indexed by ERIC with information on dates and type (comprehensive or selective) of coverage), total number of records in database from the title, peer review status (currently indexed journals only), brief description from Ulrich’s Periodical Directory, ISSN, publisher, frequency

• Thesaurus list of  controlled vocabulary terms used by ERIC: can search alphabetically or browse by category; can create search from selected thesaurus terms; can limit to full text sources

• Online form for submission of materials (papers, presentations, theses, dissertations, reports and other materials) for consideration for inclusion in the database (to grant ERIC permission to disseminate full text and archive a full-text electronic copy; author retains copyright if material is accepted)

• Expansion of online access to nearly 340,000 documents indexed from 1966 to 1992, now available only in microfiche. Digitization project to get permission from authors to convert to digital format (1992 and backward); 20,000 full text documents released June 24, 2007; first wave of MF Digitization Project—first release provides access to more than 20,000 documents produced on microfiche by ERIC between 1988 and 1992. Thousands of copyright holders gave ERIC permission to scan and display older work previously only on microfiche. Additional full text content will released over next 2 years with a March 2009 completion date.

• News and News Archive for latest information

• Link to full text of ED 400831, Directory of ERIC Resource Collections (1996) to find locations of microfiche collections (1966-2004) where documents can be read (ERIC no longer produces microfiche). Directory includes locations, contact information, collections, equipment.

• My ERIC feature for viewing, renaming, deleting saved searches; viewing records in My Saved Folders; submitting materials (papers, etc.) for consideration in the ERIC database

Online Guides

Help Button in upper right of home page, with Overview, General Frequently Asked Questions, Using ERIC Search and ERIC Thesaurus, Using My ERIC

Search Help button in corner of search box connects to Using ERIC Search

Search Tips in search box lists several tips with a link to additional examples