Using the ERIC Database

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Using the ERIC Database
This tutorial will show you how to access ERIC
which contains citations, abstracts and some
full-text materials from journals and other
materials related to the field of education. You
will also learn how to construct effective
searches for empirical research articles in
scholarly journals and how to access
materials. May 1, 2006
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What is ERIC?

• The worlds largest source of education
  information
• Provides citations and abstracts of education
  journal and magazine articles AND unique ERIC
  Documents
• Our version is restricted access to WSU
  affiliates only (Students, Faculty and Staff)
• Is NOT a full-text database
• Has links to check for full-text in other online
  library resources through
  (Article Linker)

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Locate the ERIC Database

• Go to the WSU Library System Home Page
  www.lib.wayne.edu
• Click on the letter E under Articles Databases
• Click on ERIC (FirstSearch) in the database list
  that comes up
• The ERIC (CSA) database contains the same
  citations, but has less full-text article links.

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ERIC Advanced Search Screen

• Multiple Search Types
• Limit Date Ranges
• Limit Document Type
• Limit to WSU Subscriptions

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Forming Your Search in ERIC

• My general topic of interest is effective use of
  instructional design in distance education.
• Lets view this topic, but extract its most
  important components.
• This is how we begin to identify the keywords we
  will use in our search.

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Forming Your Search in ERIC

• effective use of instructional design in distance
  education

instructional design
distance education
ADDIE
e-learning
distance learning
instructional systems
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Building an Advanced Search in ERIC
Now lets enter our search terms. instructional
design distance education
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Building an Advanced Search in ERIC
How successful was the search?

• Note the number of citations returned-too few or
  too many?
• (this search produced almost 1,500 results)
• Look at the titlesare they relevant to your
  topic?
• Can the search be constructed better?

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Building an Advanced Search in ERICSpecial
Commands

• Proximity Searching
• Use w between two words that you want found
  together as a phrase
• instructional w design

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Building an Advanced Search in ERICSpecial
Commands

• Lets use what we just learned narrow our search
• Add w to our search terms, so it will look for
  each of them as a phrase.

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Building an Advanced Search in ERICSpecial
Commands

• Whats changed?
• Reduced the number of citations.
• Use of the w made results more relevant
• How can we increase the relevancy of search
  results?

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Building an Advanced Search in ERICUsing
Descriptors

• Click on an article title, then scroll down on
  the page to the DESCRIPTORS area
• Consistent terms used to describe concepts
• Searching a descriptor searches only this area of
  the record

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Building an Advanced Search in ERICUsing
Descriptors

• Type in the DESCRIPTOR exactly as you saw it in
  the full citation
• Select DESCRIPTORS PHRASE from the drop-down menu
• (If the DESCRIPTOR term has only one word, then
  you would select DESCRIPTOR. Use DESCRIPTOR
  PHRASE when the DESCRIPTOR has more than one word
  in it)

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Building an Advanced Search in ERICUsing
Descriptors

• We have reduced our search results to those
  citations that have both instructional design
  and distance education as DESCRIPTORS.
• We now have less than 1,000 results.
• But we can narrow our results even more

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Building an Advanced Search in ERICSpecial
Command and Limits

• This search includes ERIC Documents and general
  articles, not just research.
• What if we just want to limit our search to
  research articles from journals?

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Building an Advanced Search in ERICSpecial
Commands and Limits

• Special Commands ERIC
• Enter Research as your search term, and choose
  Record Type from the drop-down menu to the right
  of the search term box, and ERIC will return only
  Research Reports (This works only in ERIC)
• Select Journal from the Document Type drop-down
  menu to limit your search to journal articles only

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Building an Advanced Search in ERICSpecial
Commands

• Lets narrow our search one more time
• Add research as a search term, and select RECORD
  TYPE as the search type from the drop down menu.
• Select JOURNAL from the Document Type drop-down
  menu
• Click in the
• to limit your search to journals in the WSU
  libraries (online and print)

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Building an Advanced Search in ERICSpecial
Commands and Limits

• Lets look at our search results
• We went from over 900 to 36 citations in our
  search results.
• Each one is a research article that relates
  specifically to the topic.

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Analyzing Search Results in ERICJournal Citation
(With Full-Text Link)
Click in this box to mark the citation for group
printing
Source gives the Journal Information. This tells
you the name of the journal that published the
article
Title of Article
Accession No. begins with EJ. This indicates it
is a journal article citation. Do not write down
the EJ number. You cannot retrieve Journal
Articles using an EJ number
Direct links to the full-text of the article. PDF
is best choice for printing
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Analyzing Search Results in ERIC

• WARNING ABOUT FULL-TEXT!
• ERIC is not a full-text database.
• Do not limit your searches to full-text in ERIC
• ALL JOURNALS AND ALL JOURNAL ARTICLES ARE NOT
  AVAILABLE ONLINE IN FULL-TEXT.
• You will be able to link to articles available
  online through WSU by selecting the ARTICLE
  TITLE, then selecting

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Advanced Searching in ERICREVIEW

• ERIC contains citations for two types of items
  journal articles and ERIC documents.
• ERIC Documents are NOT journal articles.
• You can limit your search to journal articles in
  ERIC by selecting JOURNAL from the Document Type
  drop-down menu.
• Use the terms in the DESCRIPTOR area of the full
  citation to narrow your search and to identify
  additional search terms.
• ERIC is not a full-text database, but some
  articles have full-text links. If there is not a
  full-text link, click the article title and click
  on the to access the full-text
  (if available).