Toolkit

Transcript

Hi, this is Bobbie. I will be showing you how to search the ERIC database using keywords. ERIC covers the field of education and provides records consisting of citations and abstracts for journal articles and educational documents. ERIC documents can be books, chapters, theses, dissertations, government reports, and curriculum guides. Before beginning a search in this database, do some brainstorming and identify keywords to describe your topic. For example, I am trying to locate some journal articles that discuss current methods for teaching social studies at the elementary school level. Possible keywords for this topic include teaching method* and social studies. To search the ERIC database using these keywords, type in teaching method*. The * is a truncation symbol that will allow me to search for spelling variants of this term. In the second box I can type in social studies. There are several ways to limit a search in ERIC. For example, by date (2000-2010). Educational level - interested in Elementary Education. Since I am interested in locating journal articles, I will apply this limit. This search retrieved 140 documents. I am changing the sort by to date descending so that I can review the most recent documents first. As I scroll through the list, I see that some of the articles provide the full text electronically and some do not. This record looks interesting. I am going to click on the title and read the abstract. This is great. It notes that the article is peer reviewed. The abstract sounds interesting and so now I want to locate the full text of the article. I can click here. This is an example of a journal that is not available electronically. The only option is ZSR print holdings. However, after reading the information here about the library's print holdings, I discover that this issue is in the ZSR Library. For additional assistance on how to use WFU full text options, you can view the screencast on "What to Do When Full Text Doesn't Work" which is available on the toolkit page. You can also contact a librarian at zsr.wfu.edu/ask.