Education Overview  Tags: educational_research  

This guide provides a brief look at the research materials related to Education available through the MSU Libraries beginning with an overview of ERIC and Education Abstracts and a handful of specialized indexes. It also lists some of our most recent handbooks and encyclopedias. Like many disciplines, education has a growing presence on the Web. There are many sites, often with commercial interests, that provide education related content. Please see the listings on my main education resources page for guidance to some of the best of the web.

Kate Corby

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Table of Contents:     – ERIC    – Education Abstracts    – Other Electronic Indexes

Introduction

MSU Libraries subscribe to two major electronic indexes in the field of education, ERIC and Education Abstracts. The product Educators Reference Complete, provided to all libraries in Michigan, while containing many useful citations, generally does not add substantially to the coverage provided by ERIC and Education Abstracts.

For research on education topics in other countries, especially outside the Americas, it is often necessary to search international studies databases. The Education Databases from Other Countries page can offer some assistance, please contact the Library for additional assistance.

ERIC

The Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) is funded by the federal government to assure that current educational research findings are available to teachers in the field. Until December of 2003, a series of clearinghouses, each devoted to a specific specialized aspect of education, indexed journal articles, research reports and other materials for listing in the ERIC database. After a lapse of several months, in 2004 the contract for compiling the database was awarded to a single contractor. This lapse resulted in some coverage gaps. As of July 2009 the ERIC index database has largely recovered, gaps in coverage are no longer a problem.

The ERIC index is available at MSU from two different vendors:

FirstSearch is part of a state-wide initiative to offer a variety of databases on the web. It includes all of ERIC and allows you to print or send your results via email. A small percent of the journal articles are available full text within the FirstSearch system; most others can be found by using the "Find Text @ MSU" links or checking the Library Catalog for the journal title.

CSA is a powerful search interface. Researchers who are doing a complex search of the ERIC database should use ERIC through this software. One useful feature—CSA has loaded information about the peer review status of all the journals for all the years ERIC indexes. Users can sort results sets to show only peer-reviewed items. CSA provides links to MSU holding via "Find Text @ MSU." When those links fail check the Library Catalog for the journal title.

It was formed by the merger of two printed indexes, Resources in Education (RIE) and Current Index to Journals in Education (CIJE).  All content from these two indexes in now in the online product. The accession numbers are one key to the type of information retrieved:

The ED (ERIC Document) numbers in the ERIC database begin in 1966 and index research reports, pamphlet material, papers from professional meetings, and association/organization publications. There are also some listings for commercially published books. Many ERIC documents are  available full-text on the Web. Locate them using the "Full Text" links that display within citations in the database. ED records listed in ERIC but not part of the online full-text service are often available in the MSU Libraries, check the Library Catalog. (note: Find Text @ MSU links do not work for ED items.)

The EJ (ERIC Journal) numbers in the ERIC database are journal articles. In 1969 ERIC began selectively covering over 1,000 journals, most of them in English. While this is a huge number of journals, the emphasis is on selective; very few journals were covered in their entirety. Since 2004 the number of titles has decreased significantly (now about 800) but the coverage for most is more complete. While very few of the journals are available full text through the ERIC system, many are available to the MSU community via links in the database or listings of our journal subscriptions within the Library Catalog. Use the links that say "Find Text @ MSU."

The Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors can be very useful for identifying appropriate subject headings to search in ERIC. It is vailable within the FirstSearch and CSA search engines and is on the web at the ERIC site. A series of cross references guide users to the best headings for their search. ERIC carefully indexes each item in the database for specific subject content and academic level. Indexing by level (e.g. grade 2, intermediate grades, higher education) can be important and ERIC is unique among education resources in doing this thoroughly. Unless totally inappropriate, every ERIC record will have at least one academic level descriptor.

Education Abstracts

Although nominally covering fewer journals (about 700) Education Abstracts (or Education Index as the print product was called) indexes new issues of journals quickly and covers some journals not listed in ERIC. The database offers citations to English language literature about all aspects of education at every level, starting in 1983. The Libraries also have the printed version of this index, which goes back to 1929. It is located in the Main Library Stacks, Basement East - Z 5813 .E23.

Specialized Indexes

Educational researchers will also want to be familiar with these specialized indexes. Not as user-friendly as some products, consider asking for assistance if you don't get the results you expect from a search.

Proquest Dissertations and Theses (formerly called Dissertation Abstracts International,) which indexes the doctoral dissertations produced at more than 1000 institutions, most in North America. MSU Libraries do not collect the dissertations of other schools, but the extensive abstracts in this database will help users decide if they would like to request the dissertations through InterLibrary Loan. Dissertations prepared since 1997 by MSU students or students at other schools in our group (CIC or Big Ten) are available full-text online to MSU users.

Web of Science is a specialized database that indexes the current journal literature through its footnotes. It can be used to locate current updates of an older relevant item or to assess the significance of a known item based on the number of times it has been cited. Coverage of education in this index is minimal. The search software is finicky, follow instructions exactly, or ask for assistance from the library. Education researchers hoping to find citations to a given work should also check for "Cited by" listings to the work in Google Scholar.

Educational Administration Abstracts, also in print thru 2007 at Reference, 1 East - Z5814 .M26 E3.  Covers English language journal literature and books from 1966 on, from the fields of public administration, business and education. Published by Sage with their typical one-word indexing, which makes it hard to find specific topics.