ERIC
This guide is designed to introduce you to the effective and efficient use of the ERIC database. For a more detailed treatment, take advantage of the help screens within ERIC itself.
What is ERIC?
ERIC (the Education Resources Information Center), as sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences, is ultimately the responsibility of the United States Department of Education. That's right, your tax dollars are keeping alive this unique, powerful database for locating information on nearly every education-related topic.
ERIC covers all all levels of education, although it is weighted most heavily towards K-12. You will find this database to be loaded with theory and application, lesson plans and case studies, administrative topics and career issues, and more.
Where to find it
Although the Department of Education maintains ERIC's content, they have allowed other database providers to present ERIC to end-users such as yourselves. These providers may then add full-text and other bells and whistles.
At Hewes Library, ERIC is available to you:
- ERIC via EBSCOhost:
Advantages: very clear search interface, making for intuitive advanced queries; more full-text articles than FirstSearch
Disadvantages: detailed record view that can be confusing; no simple way to combine descriptors - ERIC via FirstSearch
Advantages: clear detailed record view; great interface for combining descriptors
Disadvantages: oversimplified search screen; fewer full-text articles than EBSCOhost
Tips for using the ERIC interface
EJs and EDs
ERIC contains two main types of material, ERIC journals (EJ) and ERIC documents (ED). You may search one, the other, or both together:
- EJs are articles from magazines and scholarly journals: exactly what you have come to expect from a library database.
- EDs are documents specifically prepared for and published by ERIC. Often prepared by teachers, librarians, counselors, administrators and other folks on education's front lines, EDs tend to be longer documents, detailing lesson and unit plans, case studies and other applicables.
Other search filters
With over one million documents to choose from, your ERIC searches will yield overwhelming piles of articles, unless you take the time to apply search filters ahead of time. This works best via the EBSCOhost interface, where you find, on the search screen, each of the following filter options:
- Educational level
- Publication type
- Intended audience
- Government level
Choosing these filters wisely (and mixing them up for different searches) will drastically reduce the number of articles that you find, thereby saving you time.
ERIC and TED are friends
You may find this to be a terribly twentieth-century recommendation, but in the Library's Ready Reference Collection (opposite the photocopier on the Main Level), there is a print guide to using ERIC:
- Thesaurus of ERIC descriptors, 14th ed., 2001, RDY REF LB 15. T42 2001
TED is incalculably helpful for targeting exact terms and phrases for best use within the ERIC database. It offers multiple ways to look up the term that you have in mind, and match it up with an "official" term that ERIC recognizes as a descriptor or subject. We suggest glancing through TED before you ever hit the keyboard, to give you a simple view of your topic's position within ERIC's overall hierarchy.
Human resources: your local librarians
Hopefully, the ideas and resources above will help you to get started in your research. If you have any questions, comments or difficulties, please contact a librarian at the Reference Desk: (309) 457-2301. Ask early and ask often: the more time that you give us to help, the more we can do for you.
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