Using the ERIC Database

1. 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

2. What is ERIC? • The world’s 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)

3. 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.

4. ERIC Advanced Search Screen • Multiple Search Types • Limit Date Ranges • Limit Document Type • Limit to WSU Subscriptions

5. My general topic of interest is effective use of instructional design in distance education. Let’s view this topic, but extract its most important components. This is how we begin to identify the keywords we will use in our search. Forming Your Search in ERIC

6. Forming Your Search in ERIC effective use of instructional design in distance education instructional design distance education ADDIE e-learning distance learning instructional systems

7. Building an Advanced Search in ERIC Now let’s enter our search terms. instructional design distance education

8. 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 titles—are they relevant to your topic? • Can the search be constructed better?

9. 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

10. Building an Advanced Search in ERICSpecial Commands Let’s 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.

11. Building an Advanced Search in ERICSpecial Commands What’s changed? • Reduced the number of citations. • Use of the w made results more relevant How can we increase the relevancy of search results?

12. 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

13. 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)

14. 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

15. 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?

16. 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

17. Building an Advanced Search in ERICSpecial Commands Let’s 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)

18. Building an Advanced Search in ERICSpecial Commands and Limits Let’s 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.

19. 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

20. 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

22. 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).