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Educational Researchers need

the Educational Resources Information Center

ERIC, the Educational Resources Information Center, provides extensive coverage of major developments in educational research and practice. The Mission of ERIC is

From the Library Homepage, click on Databases.  Click on Alphabetical, then on E.  There are several different versions of ERIC available, listed in the following order:
 

1. ERIC via EBSCOhost: This interface is only accessible to ISU students and staff.  You can access this interface from off-campus by following the instructions.
      Benefits of using this interface include:
• Partial full-text access to journal articles indexed in ERIC
• Full-text access to documents indexed in ERIC from 1996 to present via the ERIC Document Reproduction Service (EDRS)
• A user-friendly search interface that allows for guided and expert searches as well as access to an publication list of titles indexed in ERIC and a online thesaurus of ERIC descriptors
• Links that allow you to do a quick search of the Library catalog
• A quick link to fill out requests for Interlibrary loan services


2. ERIC (from the Educational Resources Information Center)
This interface does not limit access to ISU students and staff and can be searched by anyone with Internet access.  There are 4 different versions of ERIC available from here. Although we recommend searching ERIC via EBSCOhost, this interface may prove to be helpful to users who haven't set their proxy access yet or to users who are no longer affiliates of Indiana State University. This site has added benefits as well which include:

• Partial Full-Text access to documents indexed in ERIC
• Lesson plans by Subject
• Searching assistance via Ask an ERIC Expert Service & Chat with a Librarian
• Online thesaurus and a list of journal titles
• Information on how to subscribe and search mailing lists pertaining to education
• Lists of Internet sites, discussion lists, and organizations by topic (Just click on Topics A-Z)

In the EBSCOhost interface you can choose to perform a Basic, Guided, or an Expert search.  These buttons are located at the top of the screen under the EBSCO logo.  The Guided search allows you to put in up to four search terms and provides you with special limiters to limit your search results by publication type, ERIC journals or documents, audience, government level, country of publication, and language.

Performing a search: Once you select your search screen (Basic, Guided, or Expert) type your term into the Find: box and click on the Search button.

Viewing your results: The Result List will appear after performing search. Click the blue arrow buttons at the top or bottom of the results list to view next set of records.

Time Saver: Mark records for batch printing. Click the box in the Mark column on the result list and click on the Print button located at the top and the bottom of the Result list. You also have the option of e-mailing the records, after marking your records, click on the "E-mail" button.

Searching by the ERIC Thesaurus of Descriptors: To find items by subject, utilize the online ERIC Thesaurus.  Click on Thesaurus Search located at the top of the screen.  Type your term in the For: box and click the Browse button. The thesaurs will either list your original term (if it appears in the database) and provide you with the proper term (identified by the term Use:) or it will display your term with a list of broader, narrower, or related terms below it.  To search by term, select the box next to the term and click the Search button located at the top and the bottom of the screen. To search by a suggested term (those terms listed under your original search term) click on it first, then select the box and click on the Search button.
 
 

ERIC Document records will contain a combination of the following:

• Full text from EDRS    |    Check ISU Catalog for Local Holdings  |   Interlibrary Loan Link

See the section: Locating the Education Documents You Need.

ERIC Journal records will contain a combination of  the following:

• Check ISU Catalog for Local Holdings         |   Linked Full Text          |   Interlibrary Loan Link

Tip: When looking through the individual records, you will see that the subjects covered are highlighted in blue. If you click on one of the highlighted subjects, you will be able to view a list of more records on the same subject. Authors and Sources [journal titles] are also hyperlinks.

Time Saver: Mark records for batch printing. Click the box in the "Print: click here to Mark for print box on the individual recordt OR use the Mark column on the Results list. Use the Print | Email | Save buttons. You must type in your email address and the domain of your e-mail address in order for EBSCOhost to mail the results to you. To e-mail or print the full-text of an article, the full text must appear on the screen.

How to find it if it is not fulltext:  Look for the "Source" of the article that you want in your library's catalog. The source is the title of the magazine or journal in which the article appeared.

If you want to limit your search results to only the articles that are available in fulltext, select the "Full Text" box when you create your search. However, this may exclude records that may be important to your topic.
 

Examples from Ebscohost:

Bridging the Gap between Theory and Practice: Integrating Multicultural Theory into an Undergraduate Foundations of Education Class. Schuster, Tracy J. (ED451802)
Note: This title is not held locally Full Text from EDRS ILL Link

The Effects of Instructional Intervention on Improving Proportional, Probabilistic, and Correlational Reasoning Skills among Undergraduate Education Majors. Vass, E.; Schiller, D.; Nappi, A. J.
Journal of Research in Science Teaching, v37 n9 p981-95 Nov 2000 (EJ615660)
Note: This title is not held locally ILL Link

Hint: You may wish to print out the complete listing of documents found; even though this listing will be incomplete for citation purposes, you can refer back to it or use it to rebuild your search at a later date. You can use it as a checklist as you examine your individual results.

In addition to information in any style manuals you may have, refer to ERIC's How to Cite ERIC Materials in a Bibliography http://ericir.syr.edu/Eric/Help/cite.shtml; INSPIRE's How to Cite http://www.inspire.net/cite.html or the ISU Library's Citing Electronic Information Sources e_citing.pdf

Once you have conducted your search in ERIC, and printed off your citations, exit the database/website. Access the Online Catalog. The list of citations you receive will be a mixture of two types of records: journals and documents. As you evaluate each individual citation, note that each record begins with an Accession Number field. ERIC journal record accession numbers begin with an EJ prefix; documents begin with an ED prefix.

ERIC Journal Records: Individual citations in ERIC follow a labeled fields format; i.e., information is presented in individual areas on your screen. Most field label meanings are obvious; e.g., Author(s), Title. [The ERIC Author and Subject Headings fields are clickable links.]

ERIC Document Records: The same labeled fields format mentioned above applies to individual ERIC document records; indeed, many of the field labels are the same as those found in the ERIC journal records. The Accession Number (#) field is very important; each ERIC Document (ED) is filed in numerical order by its unique accession number in the Teaching Materials, Microforms & Media Department (2nd floor).

CHECKING THE ISU LIBRARY CATALOG: The EBSCOhost interface provides a link within the result to automatically check the Library's catalog to see if ISU owns the journal.  To check the Library catalog, click on the link that says Check the ISU Catalog for Local Holdings. If we own a journal a result list or a record will appear.  If we don't own a journal then a message will appear saying, your search resulted in no hits! (Then you will need to use our Interlibrary Loan forms.

In addition, use the Library's E-Journal List to determine if the article is available in other full-text subscription databases.

In Ebscohost, you can browse journal titles listed in the database by clicking on the Publications button.You can also search via ERIC's Processing & Reference Facility list.
 

ERIC Documents will be indicated by an ED and then a number (for example ED459597). To locate ERIC documents follow the instructions for the specific databases below:

ERIC via EBSCOhost: ERIC documents from 1996 to present (must be ERIC Documents numbered higher than ED348466) are available full-text via EBSCOhost.  To access the full-text, click on the link that says Full text from EDRS.  If this link isn't available then the document is older than 1996 and you will have to retrieve it from the Library.  To do so, follow the steps below:
 

1. Print out the record from ERIC
2. Go to Teaching Materials, TMM&M, (located on the second floor of the Library) and use the six-digit document accession number taken from the ERIC # field to find the document in our ERIC Microfiche collection. Read and copy pages from the microfiche via Teaching Materials’ microfiche readers; you may also check out the microfiche and a reader (limited quantities available).
3. Distance Ed courses: If you are a distance ed student request a copy of the document via our Distance Ed library support service.

ONLINE FULL-TEXT:  If you locate an ERIC Document number elsewhere than within the Ebscohost database, you can connect to the ERIC Document Reproduction Service (EDRS) [linked on ISU's
Databases/Alphabetical listing, too] From the opening menu of the E*Subscribe screen, choose Express Search or Full Search. Express Search: enter up to 30 ED###### accession numbers , and click the Search button.  A list of results will come up (ignore pricing information unless you plan to pay ERIC directly for documents!). If you see the pdf icon  , then the entire ERIC Document is available to you. The icon  will lead you to a copy of the ERIC Document’s basic information (abstract, etc.).  Full Search:  allows you to search for ERIC Documents by date ranges, accession number, author, title, clearinghouse, issue month, publication date, publication type, language, and keyword in abstract. Examples of each search type are available by clicking on  .   There are also several sorting options. Online Help is available. Once finished, please click on Logoff E*Subscribe. Wow: access to more than 85,000 Documents!

Resources In Education issues Available for Searching: RIENOV1966 - present (ED010000 - present); Available for Downloading and Viewing: RIEJAN1993 - present

You can explore the ERIC search options and choose where you want your search terms to appear. In some ERIC databases, you can enter specific Publication Types to search. Publication Types are:
 

010 Books COLLECTED WORKS 020 General 021 Conference Proceedings 022 Serial 030 Creative Works (Literature, Drama, Fine Arts) DISSERTATIONS/THESES 040 Undetermined 041 Doctoral 042 Masters Theses 043 Practicum Papers GUIDES 050 General (use more specific code, if possible) Classroom Use 051 Instructional Materials (for Learner) 052 Teaching Guides (for Teacher) 055 Non-Classroom Use (for Administrative and Support Staff, and for Teachers, Parents, Clergy, Researchers, Counselors, etc., in Non-classroom Situations) 060 Historical Materials 070 Information Analyses (State-of-the-Art Papers, Research Summaries, Reviews of the literature on a Topic) 071 ERIC Information Analysis Products (IAPs) 072 Book/Product Reviews

073 ERIC Digests (Selected) in Full Text 074 Non-ERIC Digests (Selected) in Full Text 080 Journal Articles 090 Legal/Legislative/Regulatory Materials 100 Audiovisual/Non-Print Materials 101 Computer PRograms 102 Machine-readable Data Files (MRDFs) 110 Statistical Data (Numerical, Quantitative, etc.) 120 Viewpoints (opinion Papers, Position Papers, Essays, etc.) REFERENCE MATERIALS 130 General (use more specific code, if possible) 131 Bibliographies/Annotated Bibliographies 132 Directories/Catalogs 133 Geographic Materials/Maps 134 Vocabularies/Classifications/Dictionaries REPORTS 140 General (use more specific code, if possible) 141 Descriptive (ie., Project Descriptions) 142 Evaluative/Feasibility 143 Research/Technical 150 Speeches, Conference Papers 160 Tests, Evaluation Instruments 170 Translations 171 Multilingual/Bilingual Materials

Each search field has a two-letter code. You can also use those to search. For example, you could enter Libraries and 080 to get journal articles with Libraries in the default search field set (.mp. = abstract, title, heading word, identifiers). You can search by the code number (after 1974) or the phrases. Sometimes people want to search ERIC but want to retrieve ONLY journal article citations. In order to do this, combine your search term with the phrase: Journal Articles or the code 080; e.g., Libraries and 080.

ERIC utilizes a controlled vocabulary (like searching by subject in the Online Catalog); when you do a subject search, you are trying to match your topic with the correct term. You can search ERIC by simply entering keywords and phrases, but limiting your search terms to the ERIC Subject Heading may allow for more useful results. If you don't specify subject, ERIC searches all record fields or a set of default fields (varies by database access) and may pull your search term from a sentence in the abstract field; you often get hundreds of results and it's hard to sift through them. Ebscohost includes a Thesaurus Search option. You can also consult the print Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors. Copies of the Thesaurus are kept in Reference (1st floor).

Online access to the Thesaurus is available at http://www.ericfacility.net/extra/pub/thessearch.cfm. You can search the Thesaurus by entering Keywords; you can also specify a Category; e.g., The Educational Process: School Perspectives. An older interface is available at the Eric Search Wizard site at http://ericae.net/scripts/ewiz/amain2.asp Through a system of abbreviations and numbers, each entry in the Thesaurus lets you know which index terms are all right to use. In addition, entries often include other searchable terms, broken down into broader terms (BT), narrower terms (NT), and related terms (RT). The entry below is excerpted from the print Thesaurus and shows the arrangement. Terms that are not recognized by the system and should not be used in subject searching are indicated (UF). Some entries include a scope note (SN), or definition, of the term.

The main page: http://www.eric.ed.gov/

ERIC Slide Show: http://www.eric.ed.gov/resources/eric_slides.html

AskERIC's Q&A Service http://ericir.syr.edu/Qa/ Utilizing the diverse resources and expertise of the national ERIC System, AskERIC staff will respond to your question within 2 business days with ERIC database citations and Digests, Internet resources, and referrals to other sources of information. AskERIC responds to EVERY question with personalized resources relevant to YOUR needs. See this page for a brief list of Hot Topics and visit the Hot Topics Archives at http://ericir.syr.edu/Virtual/Qa/archives/

Assistance from ISU: Assistance in using ERIC or any other library resource is always available at the Information Desk (1st floor, Main Library) or through the Ask a Librarian links on the Library Homepage.

Always ask for help at the Information Desk or contact us for assistance in using these or any other library resources.

Online Guides

Library Instruction Marshamiller@indstate.edu

Indiana State University Library