Searching ERIC and the Literature Review Process

Background on Literature Review
Who's ERIC -- ERIC over the Web 
Database searching basics -- Specifying Fields  --Identifying Descriptors 
Getting Your Hands on the Materials You've Found  -- Vikat-PSU online catalog  -- Beyond PSU

Process of Scholarly Publishing

A discipline communicates with itself through newsletters, conferences, magazines, research reports, and journals. Respected work generally demonstrates awareness of related or contrasting work and is self-conscious enough to recognize where it fits in to other work. Specialized fields grow out of broader fields, publications follow. Researchers in a discipline can search this body of literature to find previous work on their area by using periodical indexes and databases. This page presents an overview of the process of searching databases with specific attention to the ERIC database.

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Searching ERIC

In the field of education, the primary literature source is the ERIC database.  ERIC is a national information network for education and its related disciplines.  ERIC's purpose is to describe and disseminate information from research and other sources. To facilitate this mission, subject-oriented clearinghouses at 22 U.S. universities have been established where data are received, analyzed, described and disseminated.  The information that has been collected is catalogued and indexed in Resources in Education (RIE, shelved on the 2nd floor yellow index tables Z 5813 .R4).   Also, the centers index articles that appear in approximately 800 professional education journals, and this indexing is reported in Current Index to Journals in Education (CIJE, shelved on the 2nd floor yellow index tables, Z 5813 .C8).   These two print indexes are combined to form the ERIC database.

Getting to ERIC over the Web

<http://newfirstsearch.oclc.org/dbname=ERIC;FSIP>
< http://www.eduref.org/Eric/adv_search.shtml>
http://ericae.net/scripts/ewiz/amain4.asp This search engine is very good for finding ERIC descriptors.  You can type in a term and it will map your term to the descriptors which  best match that term.   Beyond this benefit of providing a sort of onine thesaurus, the search engine is lousy.

**	For information about remote access to licensed databases, consult the page on Off Campus Access.

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Database Searching Basics

Overview | Boolean  Logic  |   Nesting   |  Wildcards  |  Specifying Fields  |  ERIC Descriptors 

AND Narrows a search	computers AND learning		Retrieves all records with both words "computers" and "learning"
OR Broadens a search by suggesting synonyms for search terms	computers OR technology		Retrieves all records with either word "computers" or "technology"
NOT Focuses a search by eliminating irrelevant concepts. ***Use with care!!!!!!!	computers NOT programming		Eliminates all the records that contain the word "programming"

Parenthesis around like terms structures the computer’s retrieval of the records.

(computers OR technology) AND learning

Retrieves all records with terms "computers" or "technology"; combines that set of records with all records that contain the term "learning".

A wildcard or truncation symbol is used to replace characters so the computer will retrieve variant spellings and endings for a term

(comput* OR technolog*) AND learn*

Retrieves all records with words that start with comput (including computer, computing, computation, computers, etc.), OR technolog (including technologies, technology, technological, etc.); and combines them with the records that include words that start out learn (including learning, learned, learns, learner, etc.)

You can focus your search more precisely in ERIC by limiting the retrieval to certain fields. Typically you might want to limit your search to articles where the major concept that you are interested in has been used as a descriptor and the secondary aspects appear as key words (anywhere in the title, abstract, descriptor or notes fields).

ERIC (via FirstSearch) searchable fields:

The default or subject search looks for terms from these fields: descriptors, titles, abstracts, and notes.  You can limit your search terms to the following fields:

The list of publication types and their codes (you can enter either the code for a type or the name of the type):

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Getting Your Hands on the Materials You've Identified

PSU Library  |  Beyond PSU

Now that you’ve identified material in ERIC how to get it?

You can locate journals in PSU library by looking up the name of the journal in Vikat, the PSU online catalog.

Vikat Screens

	In the Vikat opening screen, type the search words into the search box and click the button for the kind of search you're doing.  In this case, we're looking for the Harvard Educational Review, searching for it as a Periodical Title
	From the display of the catalog record, you can get the call number (L11 .H3) and the holdings information which will tell you which years of the journal PSU Library has. You can scroll to the end of the record to see which floor the journal is shelved on or check the call number charts in the library.

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What to Do if the Journal Isn't Available at PSU Library

Interlibrary Loan  |  ORULS  |  ORBIS

If you don't find a journal in PSU's Library, you have two options for getting your hands on the article: Interlibrary Loan (ILL) or going to a nearby library that owns the journal. 

Interlibrary Loan (ILL)

ILL is a service of the PSU Library which will obtain books or photocopies of journal articles from any library in the country that will lend the materials.  Most materials arrive within a week, but sometimes the service takes longer. Go to the Interlibrary Loan office (Room 170 on the 1st floor) to fill out an ILL form (or you can fill it out online at: http://www.lib.pdx.edu/services/ill/illindex.html,) and when your material arrives the ILL staff will notify you.

ORULS (Oregon Regional Union List of Serials)

Another option for locating material is to go to a library that subscribes to the publication you need.  Using ORULS, a database listing the journal holdings of all libraries in Oregon, you can determine which libraries subscribe to a journal and for which years. < http://db.osl.state.or.us/oruls2k.htm>.

A list of Portland Area libraries and their ORULS location codes:

Orbis

Orbis is a consortium of Oregon academic libraries which includes Lewis & Clark, Reed, University of Portland, and most of the other schools in the Oregon University System.  You can search a combined catalog of all the institutions to determine if a journal (or book) is held by any one of the libraries. http://orbis.uoregon.edu.

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This page was developed and is maintained by
Sarah Beasley, Education/Social Science Librarian
PSU Library

Last Revised (seb):
Wednesday, 14-Jan-2004 15:49:52 PST