ERIC - Education Resources Information Centre

OK, so here is the database for finding all those bibliographic references (over 1.3 million in fact) for education literature, as well as a growing collection of full text articles. This database covers:

• journal articles

• books

• research syntheses

• conference papers

• technical reports

• policy papers

• other education-related materials

From the “Search Eric” tab your options are: Basic, Advanced or Search the thesaurus. On the right of the search screen is a “Search Tips” box that provides useful help. The Basic search allows you to enter a search term or terms and choose keyword, tile, author, descriptor (subject from the thesaurus) or ERIC number, from a dropdown menu.

The Advanced search option provides more control over the search strategy, for example:

• Full text

• ED/EJ (ERIC document or ERIC journal)

• Peer reviewed

• Publication date (pre 1966 – 2011)

• Publication type

• Education level

One particularly good feature of this database is the “thesaurus” – very useful and you can search it alphabetically or by category. Using the category option you can drill down through subject topic menus to get the broad, narrow, related, and used for terms as well as a scope note. If you choose the alphabetical option you also drill down through the topics. With that description you are sure to find the exact aspect of a subject you are looking for. One thing to note is that the “Thesaurus” does use American spellings such as “catalog”. More records are added monthly to ERIC. PDF of full-text articles can be downloaded. When you have found something of interest you can place it on your “Clipboard”. From the clipboard you can print, email, export citations or save to “My ERIC” for future use. You can search for specific journal titles under “Our Collection” and then “Journal List”.

As a test for New Zealand content, a search for “New Zealand flax” brought up one hit, “Maori chief” found four. ERIC indexes the New Zealand Journal of Adult Learning and New Zealand Journal of Geography. So why not try this database all you students, teachers, tutors and researchers out there.

Vanessa

Opposing Viewpoints

Now here is the database for those of you who want different views or debates on topics. This is very good for new concepts or ideas as it covers all the angles. Great for school projects or general research. There is a main search box in the top right of the home page or there are eight headings that you can choose from as follows:

• Business and Economics
• Energy and Environmentalism
• Health and Medicine
• Law and Politics
• National Debate Topic
• Science, Technology and Ethics
• Society and Culture
• War and Diplomacy

If you choose the View All option beside a heading you will get a list of subheadings to choose from.
Also under the homepage heading are tabs for Home, Issues, Maps and Resources. The Issues tab will take you to an alphabetical list that you can choose from. If you click on Resources you then see a list of Curriculum Standards and there is one for New Zealand. This leads on to options for drilling down into study topics for age levels.
Down the right of the homepage are the Featured Video and Featured News links.

Vanessa