Using the Education databases

1. Using the Education databases Kate Walker Education Librarian educenqs@soton.ac.uk

2. What are databases? • Databases contain records of journal articles • They also list other material, such as conference proceedings, book chapters and reports • The key databases for Education are ERIC, British Education Index and Australian Education Index

3. Database records • Databases do not contain full-text of journal articles • They contain records of articles • Records include information such as: Author, title, source (e.g. journal), keywords

4. Where to find them • Go to the Library website www.soton.ac.uk/library

5. Click on subject support

6. This will give you an A-Z list of subjects Click on Education

7. This will take you to the Education subject page Click on Finding journal articles

8. Click on Finding articles for research, dissertations and major projects

9. This will give you a list of databases. We are going to look at the first three.

10. ERIC • Run by the US Department of Education • It has a strong American bias • It covers a very large number of journals (not only American) • Database records include abstracts

11. British Education Index (BEI) • BEI is good for searching for British articles • It is quite a small database • BEI records do not have abstracts

12. Australian Education Index (AEI) • Produced by the Australian Council for Educational Research • AEI has a strong Australian bias • AEI’s records have abstracts

13. Accessing the databases • You must have VPN set up to use these off-campus • Click on the database you would like to use. It will take you through to the following screen

14. Database homepage Tick the box of the database you want to search Then click Easy Search

15. Picking out keywords • Databases cannot search for whole assignment titles, so pick out your keywords • e.g. if your topic is “Teaching Shakespeare to secondary school pupils”, your keywords are: • Shakespeare • Secondary school

16. Type your keywords into the boxes on the search page Shakespeare Secondary School Then click search

17. You will be presented with a brief list of records For more details click on the link to abstract/database record

18. This will take you through to the full article record If you would like to see if we hold the article online, click here

19. You will be taken through to the following results screen If the article is available online, there will be a link here. If the article is available in hard copy in the Library, it will say Catalog here. Ignore these two links, they don’t give you any useful information!

20. Remember! • The databases index more journals than the Library holds. You may not have access to the articles listed • If you would like an article not held by the Library, please order it on interlibrary loan: http://www.soton.ac.uk/library/services/ill.html

21. Refining your search • If you don’t come up with enough results, try using synonyms • Combine synonyms using or • e.g. secondary school or high school

22. Truncation symbol • A truncation symbol replaces one or more letters • The truncation symbol for ERIC, BEI and AEI is the dollar sign - $ • Teach$ will find • Teacher • Teaching • Teachers

23. Refining your search • If you come up with too many results: • Think of additional search terms and combine with ‘and’ • e.g. Shakespeare and Secondary school and literacy • You can also use limits to restrict the number of years you’re searching

24. Refining your search • If you still can’t find any results, try another database • More databases are listed on the Education Subject page • If you have any other queries, contact educenqs@soton.ac.uk