Library Intelligencer

ERIC Users Forum

ALA Annual 2009
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Intercontinental Hotel, Renaissance Room
Chicago, Illinois

Introduction

Wil Frost, Chair of the ERIC Users Committee, welcomed the audience and introduced the panel of speakers: Dr. Lesley Farmer (Professor, California State University, Long Beach), Christina Dunn (Director, National Library of Education), Larry Henry (Project Director, ERIC Project, CSC) and Pete Dagutis (Deputy Project Director, ERIC Project, CSC)

Trends in Educational Research
Lesley Farmer

To update education librarians on trends in educational research, Dr. Farmer commented on drivers and current topics in educational research, described research methods, and commented on some of the newer methods of gathering, analyzing, and using data.

Update from the National Library of Education
Christina Dunn

Ms Dunn talked about changes in the Department of Education. The former head of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) favored clinical studies whereas the current head, Dr. John Q. Easton, is very practical and wants to help classroom teachers. The Department of Education has given states stimulus funds for collecting state data about students. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) will probably change its name as new legislation is developed.

Ms Dunn gave an overview of ERIC, which was established as Section 172 of PL 107-197, Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (up for renewal soon). ERIC’s mission is to provide a database (citation and full-text) of educational research and information and make information accessible and to disseminate information. It covers 16 ERIC topics, ways to close the achievement gap, and ways to promote learning.

Ms Dunn detailed the process of contracts. The new ERIC contract will be awarded this summer. The award will be announced to the EBSS discussion list. The contract is based on a statement of work that tells the contractor what to do. A committee of librarians to advise ERIC is a new aspect of the contract. Ms Dunn mentioned that there is also an ERIC quality assurance contract with a different contractor that evaluates the ERIC website, database, and collection with a goal of continuous improvement. The National Library of Education is involved in all of this work on a daily basis.

At this point, ERIC has 1.3 million bibliographic records for journal articles and “grey literature” (non-journal) documents (e.g., research synthesis, conferences, technical reports, policy papers). Full-text is available for about 75% of the non-journal materials added between 2005-2009 (25% of the entire collection,1966-2009). There is a focus on grey literature and trying to centralize information access. When full text is not available, ERIC links to publishers and provides a feature that allows institutional library users to link to holdings of libraries for full-text access. ERIC works with suppliers who provide alternative access to ERIC: Cambridge, EBSCO, OCLC, Ovid/SP, Wilson, and search engines Google, Google Scholar, MSN, Yahoo.

Non-journal microfiche documents that are not available online can be requested from the National Library of Education (NLE) via the OCLC ILL form. Documents will be supplied via email. This is a service that is not widely announced due to reliability concerns; the NLE firewall may not let all files through.

Ms Dunn concluded by encouraging the audience to tell ERIC what enhancements and services they would like to see in the future.

Update from the ERIC Contractor
Larry Henry
Pete Dagutis

ERIC is increasingly thought of as a digital library rather than a database. The term “database” has a variety of meanings depending on the audience, but “digital library” is a term with a singular meaning. Between 2005-2008, more than 126,000 records were added to the ERIC collection, with an additional 23,000 in 2009 through June 30. Agreements are in place with about 760 non-journal, grey literature providers. About 984 journal titles are under agreement with publishers for rights to distribute abstracting and indexing, bibliographic records, and/or full-text. Of these, 905 are indexed comprehensively and 79 are indexed selectively. This represents a significant change in indexing philosophy from the former ERIC clearinghouse system that, in 2000 for example, covered 1,058 journals but indexed only 352 of those comprehensively.

ERIC has moved from informal relationships with publishers to formal agreements that detail rights that a publisher conveys to ERIC related to their copyrighted material. This change occurred as ERIC moved to an all-electronic system. The agreement process ensures regular, rapid, and seamless delivery of electronic content and reflects respect for copyright law, and for publishers’ and authors’ intellectual property. Agreements provide ERIC with permission to:

• Index and display bibliographic data and an abstract with the option to display full text
• Provide full text access via various options, including immediate release in ERIC, links to the publisher’s site, or full text release following an embargo period.

New content is processed within a month, and the ERIC collection accessible through the ERIC website at www.eric.ed.gov is updated four times per week. Updates are sent monthly to commercial and other suppliers.

The ERIC Project team is making progress on filling the 2002-2003 gap in journal coverage that happened during the transition period between contracts. The gap is largely filled at this point.

The ERIC digitization project has concluded and all ERIC microfiche documents have been converted to electronic format. Documents in the public domain, or with explicit copyright holder permission for electronic release, are available online in ERIC. This represents 191,900 documents from 1966-2002. ERIC continues to accept permission from copyright holders for electronic access to their older documents. Information on how to grant ERIC release permission is available on the ERIC website. Sources that were contacted for permissions during the digitization project included government agencies, commercial publishers, academic and non-academic entities, and individual authors. Lists of microfiche documents that are available in full-text can be downloaded from the Information for Librarians area of the ERIC website. Librarians should be aware that a few publishers have rescinded their permissions to display electronic full text. ERIC posts this information as well.

The update ended with a review of recent changes to the ERIC website, including RSS feeds, related item search, “find in a library” capability, information for stakeholders (e.g., librarians), and enhanced help features such as Flash tutorials and a glossary. A “would you like to try” function assists users with spelling problems. ERIC also provides ways for users to participate (e.g., recommend a source, suggest a Thesaurus term, get involved with ERIC usability testing, etc.). Go to the Information for Librarians area of the ERIC website to see more options for collaborating with ERIC.

The MARS Best of Free Reference Web Sites Committee of the Machine-Assisted Reference Section (MARS) of ALA’s Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) selected ERIC as a “best free reference web site” in 2008.

Questions from the Audience

Can non-journal, grey literature sources be recommended?
People can submit recommended sources, which will then be reviewed using the ERIC selection criteria posted at http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/res…);

Is there a list of grey literature publishers?
NLE plans to create a directory of current (and possibly past) grey literature sources but does not have the funding yet. They expect to delivery this by 2010. Source (publisher) names entered in ERIC records in the early years are problematic as names were abbreviated to make the files smaller (when disk storage space was very expensive).

How is the related item search done?
ERIC descriptors are used to determine similar items.

Is citation searching possible in ERIC?
There is no citation data in ERIC records. Google has some citation relationships for ERIC documents.

Can MyERIC results be shared?
This enhancement is under consideration.

Can you provide help for libraries that want to implement the “find in a library” feature that is based on OCLC holdings profiles?
ERIC has depended on OCLC to provide these instructions but will add more information.

Do all libraries have to keep their older ERIC microfiche? How many collections of fiche are really needed to ensure access in the future? How many copies of the digital files are needed?
The national discussion of preservation and use copy archives is ongoing. Two government dark archive copies are being maintained and a digital archive strategy has been articulated for long-term accessibility. Ms Dunn asked the audience to find out which institutions are willing to keep a full set of fiche.

Are the regional education offices possible places to store fiche collections for long-term accessibility?
They are not set up to do that.

Is the digital archive strategy available to read?
No.

Is there a need to maintain both an archive of fiche and digital files?
That is NLE’s position and is required by the contract.

Request for digital preservation project guidelines: done by request (good ERIC Users topic)

Wil Frost, Outgoing Chair
ERIC Users Committee

source:  EBSS-L at LISTSERV.UNCC.EDU