About ERIC

ERIC is the Educational Resources Information Center--a federally funded, nationwide information network designed to provide you with ready access to education literature. Coverage is from 1966 to the present.
 
What can you get from ERIC?
ERIC has more than a million abstracts including:
-Journal articles-(EJ)
More than 600,000 abstracts of articles from more than 900 journals.
-ERIC Documents-(ED)
More than 400,000 abstracts of research papers, books, conference presentations, curriculum guides, and more.
 
Find and use ERIC descriptors
Every abstract in ERIC is indexed with subject terms called descriptors. ERIC descriptors are listed in The Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors. The library has copies of the thesaurus in the reference section. (call number REF Z695.1.E3 T49) Example 1)social skills  2)ungraded classes
Another way to find descriptors is to use the descriptors from the most relevant abstracts. So instead of looking up the correct term(s) first, let your search do the work for you. Example: retention of students (repeat a grade)
 
Search Statement
Example: I'm researching the topic of the obstacles to information gathering amongst college freshman.
Break the main topics into synonymous, broader, and narrower terms:
obstacles- difficulties
information gathering- research, research methods, library skills
college freshman- underclassmen, freshmen
Search in keyword field:
(obstacles or difficulties) and (research or library skills) and (college freshmen or underclassmen)
 
Interlibrary Loan
If the SMC library does not have the materials you need, you may get them through interlibrary loan. Plan ahead, ILL doesn't happen overnight.

ERIC exercise

  1. Try the keyword search lesson plan* and environment and record how many hits you get.

    2.  

  2. Try searching lesson plan* as a keyword and environment as a descriptor, how many hits do you get?

    3.  

  3. Why are the search results so different? Which is a better search and why?

    4.  

  4. Limit the search results in number II to just journal articles, how does that change your results?

    5.  

  5. "I want to find out why school kids are cranky in the morning." The previous sentence can be broken down into several search statements, e.g. (nutrition or breakfast) and behavior. Write down examples of the other search statements and record your search results.