LIBRARY TUTORIAL 4: ERIC (EDUCATION RESOURCE INFORMATION CENTER) ERIC, or the Education Resource Information Center, is the most extensive database that we have for education research. You can access ERIC directly from the Distance Education resource page, by clicking on the hyperlink. Whenever I get into any database, first and foremost I want to look around on the page to see how I might limit my search. I can see here that I can limit to only items that are full-text within the database (since this database has both full-text and non-full-text material). I can limit to only peer-reviewed, or scholarly, information as well, if I don t want to get results back from things like popular trade magazines. I can limit by year, if I m looking for very current information, for instance, I could limit to searching only the last few years. I would not suggest limiting to education level, intended audience, or publication type, since these might weed out relevant materials for just about any search that I do.
The last place I can look to limit is by coming up next to my search boxes. I could limit here to where I m telling the database to look for my terms If I leave it at the default Select a field optional, it will search wherever it can for my words, including the title, abstract, and the full-text of the document, if it s available within the database. I could also choose to search just the title of the document, for instance, or the abstract. For now I m going to leave off all limiters, and do a search. So now, I can just enter in my search terms, and search. When I do a search for (violence or crime) and schools I get back over 7000 results for my search, which is way too many for me to look through realistically. Now, I need to think about how to limit my search further. You should limit by adding in more keywords to make your search more specific if you can. For me, I realize that I haven t limited specifically to public schools, which I can do now by changing just schools to public schools, and I can limit further by adding in the word prevention.
Now, I get back a little over 200 results, which is a lot more manageable. I could also limit further by looking to the right and left-hand sides of the results page. For instance, I could limit to full-text or peer reviewed documents, or limit by year, over on the right hand side of the page.
Within any given record, I ll be given the publication information, as well as an abstract, which is basically a summary of the article. I can read it over to see if the item is relevant for my search. Also make it a habit to look at the publication type of the record. This database will have a lot of journal articles......but it will also have things like independently published reports, and publications from the larger organization of ERIC.
What the publication type is, of course, will affect how I site it within the bibliography of my paper. Within the record, I m also given several options to save the record. I can print it that will print just the publication information and the abstract, and not the full-text (if the fulltext is available, I can print it by opening the entire document). Or, I can e-mail myself the record and choose to attach the pdf, if available. All I have to do is enter in my e-mail address. I can save the record, also, to my desktop. This next feature will be very helpful to most of you. If I click on this yellow icon, I get complete and usually correct citations for citing this record in all the major citation styles, including APA format. I can copy this citation and paste it directly into a word document. These citations are computer-generated, and often contain errors, so do make sure that you proofread any citations that you copy and paste into your bibliography. I can also choose to export this citation to Refworks, for those of you who are using Refworks.
Or add this citation to a temporary folder. You ll see that this add to folder option is available on the results list page as well. I can access these citations by going to the folder link at the top of the righthand side of the page anytime. From here I can select all the citations that I d like to save and e-mail them all to myself, or print them out, or save them.
The descriptors within a document record are a great place to look to discover more terms that I might search under. You ll notice as well that the most popular descriptors have been pulled and put over to the side of my search results. I can click on any of these on the side to limit my results further to the items that are only listed under that descriptor. As you can see, my original 232 results have been reduced to 78, under the descriptor school security.
You should know as well if I click on subject headings within a document it redoes the search and gets rid of my other search terms so I may want to go back and enter in relevant terms in the other boxes to limit my results further.