LITERATURE SEARCH IN EDUCATION

ERIC (the Educational Resource Information Center), sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, is the major research database for the field of education. It collects, indexes, and abstracts (summarizes) articles from virtually all of the 950+ U.S. journals devoted to education. Additionally, ERIC collects, indexes, abstracts, and publishes as “ERIC Documents”other items of interest to the educational community, such as conference papers, official reports of federally funded research projects, materials produced by state departments of education and other educational entities, a small number of commercially published books (abstracts only), and even classroom and other materials submitted by individual educators. Information at www.eduref.org

PsycINFO, the online edition of Psychological Abstracts, produced by the American Psychological Association, is the major research database related to the field of psychology. The database includes abstracts of articles from the professional journal literature in several languages. It also includes abstracts of books and book chapters, dissertations, and reports in psychology.

Access To The Literature At USM

Paper / Microform Subscriptions
USM subscribes to many of the journals covered in both ERIC and PsycINFO in traditional paper copies (with some older issues on microfilm), usually on only one campus. In general, Gorham is strongest in education and counseling; Portland includes the psychology collection; Lewiston holds the rehabilitation collection. The journal issues may not be taken out of the library, but articles can be photocopied on self-service machines in the libraries.
Gorham has a complete subscription to the ERIC Documents in microfiche format published until 2003, which is available to be photocopied in the library. Look to see if the item is available electronically from ERIC

Electronic Full Text
There are also links to full text articles from some journals from within the databases, which can be accessed from your Internet-access home computer or other off-campus locations. (Off-campus access requires using your last name and a USM library card number beginning 2502. . . when an authentication screen is displayed.) The articles and/or abstracts can be printed, downloaded, or e-mailed. They can be downloaded, either to your floppy disk or temporarily to the on-campus computer’s hard drive and sent as an e-mail attachment to your e-mail account. NOTICE: DO NOT LEAVE FILES ON ANY OF THE COMPUTER DRIVES AS THEY WILL BE DELETED WHEN THE COMPUTER IS REBOOTED.

Interlibrary Loan Service (used to obtain non-USM sources)
Any cited sources from your search that are not immediately available online or in the USM Libraries can be obtained within a few days, usually at no cost, through the library’s Interlibrary Loan Service. Just go to the USM Library homepage and click the “Interlibrary Loan (Illiad)” link.

Getting Help

Call the Reference Desk of the USM Library in Gorham at 780-5344. Gorham staff are the most familiar with searching the ERIC database and can help with any of the processes detailed in this tutorial.

Getting Connected

1.) Card Needed -- A current USM student/faculty library card is required if searching from off-campus locations. A library barcode number is included on the USM Card, but you must come to the library circulation desk to activate it. Separate library cards can still be issued, but the new pay-for-print system on campus ($.04 per page on computer printers $.07 per photocopied page) requires the use of the USM Cards, which are available at card offices on all campuses of USM. New card registrations are activated for remote access only on Tuesdays and Thursdays by the system in Orono, so there will be a delay in your ability to connect from home until then. Guest cards are available for anyone who desires to photocopy or print for $5.00. The Guest card will accept more money than the original $2.00 provided at purchase.

2.) Connect to the World Wide Web, preferably using Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

3.) Start at USM Library homepage on the Web: http://library.usm.maine.edu

4.) Select "Indexes and Databases" on the homepage.

5.) Select ERIC or PsycINFO, depending upon whether your research subject is primarily educational or psychological from the list of databases.

6.) Authentication from off campus -- If connecting from off campus locations, you will encounter an "authentication" screen. (If connecting from on campus, you will bypass this step.) You will be asked for your last name and your library barcode number. Fill in the boxes and click "Submit."

7.) Potential connection problem -- If you are trying to use computers at a school or public library, they may be "locked" by the IP address of the computer into the local EBSCO subscriptions and not permit you to access USM's subscriptions. There is no solution for it.

8.) The program will open in the "Advanced" search mode, which is the mode assumed in the method recommended below.

Conducting A Search

9.) Search Strategy
To perform your search, the following conceptual approach is recommended, although there are various methods:
EXAMPLE: "Find research articles in education journals on inclusion in elementary school Math classrooms."
Seperate concepts: a) Research. b) Journal articles in education.
c) Inclusion. d) Elementary School. e) Math. f) Classrooms.

10.) Use Thesaurus First --Before filling in the search boxes on the search screen, use the “Thesaurus” search button to determine whether your major subject words are the same as the official terms, called “Descriptors,” used by the database you are searching. This is a very important step because there is often a difference between current educational terminology and the thesaurus terms used to label each article in the database. EXAMPLE: When you look up “Inclusion” in the ERIC thesaurus, you are directed to use the term “Inclusive Schools” instead. PsycINFO has an entirely different set of Thesaurus terms. (Warning: It is technically possible to search two databases simultaneously by clicking the "Choose Databases" button in any EBSCO database. However, when you select more than one database, the Thesaurus function is disabled because the software cannot handle more than one set of official subject terms simultaneously.)

11.)Enter your term in the BROWSE field when using the Thesaurus.
Each Thesaurus entry defines the term you have looked up with a "Scope Note," which also tells you what year ERIC started using the term and what other terms might have been used to describe the same concept in the past. Especially useful are the lists of conceptually "Narrower terms" (NT), "Broader Terms" (BT), and "Related Terms" (RT). These are all terms that you may want to consider using in your search as well as the term under which they were listed.

12.) Click one or more Search Boxes --When you have determined the best search terms to use, click each separate term's search box. A checkmark should appear each box.

13.) Click SEARCH--This will display those sources which contain one of the terms you have checked.

Other Search Options

14.)Entering words in the FIND box (Ex. "achievement gap," inclusion or "grade retention") will search terms as KEYWORDS in the database. It is possible to combine the results of KEYWORD searches with the results of THESAURUS searches using the SEARCH HISTORY tab.

15.) Adding Synonyms -- To add synonyms to your search, type them in a single box separated by the word "or." For example, typing: "Middle schools" or "intermediate grades" in a single box that is connected with "AND" to the other boxes of your search shows you all the sources which use one phrase or the other. It is like performing two searches at once with alternative ways of expressing the same concept. (Avoid using the dropdown "OR" box, as it will probably not process your search in the way you expect.) If there aren’t enough boxes, you can enter two or more in the same box by typing the word "and" in between each word or phrase. But if you combine AND and OR searches in the same box, the OR search phrase must be separated from the AND search phrase with parentheses () Ex.[ (inclusion or mainstreaming) and highschool and students]


16.) Finding Original Research Studies in ERIC– If you need to find reports of original research studies, there are several useful ways to do it. ERIC does not seem to be wholly consistent in the way such studies are designated, so a little creativity on your part may be needed. (1) The way that seems to work most often is to use a Limiter, described in the next step, using the Publication Type dropdown box on the lower part of the search screen and choosing "Reports-Research/Technical." (2) An alternative which works particularly well if you are looking for qualitative, as opposed to quantitative, research, is to use one of the many Thesaurus terms listed under "Research." (From within the Thesaurus you need to click on the term itself to have it show its definition (“scope note”) and its narrower and related terms.) When you find a term that seems suitable, enter it in one of the search boxes instead of using the Pub. Type limiter. (3) A final suggestion is based on the fact that for many pieces of original research, the abstract will describe them as a "study." Therefore, you can simply add the word "study" as one of your keyword search terms. This approach will create some irrelevant results along with the useful ones, but it works quite well overall.

17.) Limiters -- You can save a lot of time by eliminating some unwanted potential results before you start the search. Below the search boxes on the search screen you will find other boxes that let you set several types of limits. Here are the most useful:

Date Published -- Enter the last two digits of the earliest acceptable year and current year.

Publication Type (ERIC) -- If you are looking for original research studies, most are indicated with a publication type of "Reports-Research/Technical," which is found in the dropdown box. (But see previous step for additional suggestions.)

Form/Content Type (PsycINFO) – If you are looking for original research studies, choose "Empirical Study" from the dropdown box.

Journal or Document (ERIC) -- This box lets you search only for journal articles, eliminating the ERIC documents from your results or vice versa.

Publication Type (PsycINFO) – This dropdown box lets you search only for journal articles (probably your usual choice), rather than include books, dissertations, etc.

Most of the other limiter boxes in ERIC and PsycINFO are not usually very useful for student purposes and can generally be ignored, especially the tempting “Full Text” box (because there are so many excellent journals to which USM subscribes that are not available electronically).

18.) Evaluating Your Search Results -- Perform your first search and review the results. Look for several sources which seem to be most on target for your search, and examine particularly the Subject Descriptors applied to each item. These will probably suggest other, possibly better, words to use in additional searches. Each search that you do in a single session is saved and can be retrieved by clicking the Search History tab, allowing you to go back to prior sets of results. Experiment with combining or changing different results togther

Printing, Emailing, Downloading

19.) Click Add to put in the Folder each item you wish to print, save to disk, or e-mail to yourself. Many or most of the items will be citations and abstracts only of the original sources, but some will have a link to the full text in electronic form.

Checking Electronic Availability Of Full Text

20.) In ERIC, check the brief record (that comes up first with others) to see if it has an "EJ" (journal) or "ED" (ERIC Document) number in parentheses at the end of the citation.
If EJ, check the journal citation (SOURCE field) for the name of the journal, and then determine whether USM subscribes to the journal in any one of the following ways:
a) On the "Notes"line, it may (or not) indicate whether USM subscribes.
b) The bottom line may have a message "USM Libraries own this title." If you click the link, the URSUS catalog opens and you see the subscription information for all the libraries in the system. Look to see if the issue you need is included in the time period of the "Gor", "Por", or "Lew" subscription.
c.) As indicated in #b above, URSUS lists periodical subscriptions. You can do a Title search for a journal and look for a box that says "Gor Serials,""Por Serials," or "Lew Serials" for USM campus location.
Both EJ and ED items, it may be electronically available by clicking on the underlined link (Full text from ERIC) in the record.Warning: The EBSCO software currently shows that link for all ERIC Documents back to 1966, even though electronic copies do not exist prior to 1993, and USM's subscription to electronic journals covers articles added since the early 1990s . Fortunately, there is a 95% chance that the Gorham library has any ED in its complete files of ERIC documents on microfiche. (The other 5% are commercially published books, which are cited and described in ERIC but not reproduced as ERIC documents.) To verify whether an ED is in the files, look at the "PRICE Code" line of the ERIC record. If it has an "MF" (microfiche) price code, then it should be in USM’s collection. If the "PRICE Code" line reads, "Document not available from EDRS," the item can be treated like any other book – look it up in URSUS and if not available, request it through the Interlibrary Loan Service.

21.) In PsycINFO, the sources are usually journal articles, books or book chapters, or dissertations. Check for journal holdings in the same way as in ERIC (in the step above). Check URSUS for book references and use Interlibrary Loan as needed.

Retrieving Usm Journals And Eric Documents

22.) To retrieve journal articles, go to the periodical stacks and locate the name of the journal alphabetically on the shelves, then the volume of the journal needed. Older years of some journals are kept in microfilm format. Journals cannot be checked out, so make a photocopy of articles you wish to take with you.

23.) To retrieve ERIC documents in microfiche, look for the 6-digit ED number. The documents are filed numerically in the row of ERIC Document file cabinets to the right of the journal stacks at Gorham.

24.) Interlibrary Loan is the library service which can retrieve, usually free of charge, almost any needed source which is not owned by USM or listed in URSUS. Simply fill out an electronic request form on the library homepage or a paper form in the library. Photocopies of journal articles normally take about three working days to arrive at the library, and books borrowed from outside the U Maine System can take two or more weeks. A new service of electronic delivery via email for some journal articles is in the works. Contact the ILL office at 228-8449 for any questions.

"Stealth" Eric Documents Listed In Ursus

If you happen to be looking for books on education in URSUS, you may run across ERIC documents that are not clearly listed as such. They appear in URSUS along with other documents from federal agencies identified as ORONO government documents (GOVT DOC), and they all have a federal Superintendent of Documents library call number which begins with "ED 1.310/2:" and is ended by the usual 6-digit ERIC document number. (In this case the "ED" stands for Education Department, not ERIC Document.) They appear as microfiche items which are listed as held only at Orono, but you need to know that they are also in the ERIC Document files at Gorham even though URSUS does not list Gorham. They may someday be linked in the catalog to Gorham as well, but until then it will be our little secret. Some of the newer ERIC documents in URSUS also have hot links to the full document if it is available on a government web page.

Other Useful Ebsco Databases Relating To Education

These are all available on the Indexes and Databases link on the Main Library Homepage:
* MAS Ultra -- School Edition -- Over 500 full text general interest magazines.
* Middle Search Plus -- 145 full text magazines appropriate for the middle school level.
* Primary Search -- Over 50 magazines and 100+ pamphlets for elementary students.

Last Update: 05.2005
Comments: Ask-A-Librarian