ERIC Update

The following information was taken from an IES (Institute of Education Sciences)Newsflash email this morning:

The U.S. Department of Education will spend $29 million over the next five years to enhance and operate the ERIC digital library of education literature, which offers free access to a broad array of scholarly materials. ERIC is the world's largest and most frequently used digital library of education, containing more than 1.3 million bibliographic records indexed from 1966 to the present. Its website (http://eric.ed.gov) provides free access to the ERIC digital library, which received more than 40 million visits in 2008 from educators, researchers, and the general public.

New enhancements included in this five-year contract include:

• Collaboration with the agency's library to digitize and process archival
  materials related to the history of the Department, such as early 20th century
  records from the Commissioner of Education
• Enhanced online submission format allowing Department of Education grantees
  and contractors to easily submit reports and related published research
• Establishment of a Library Committee, composed of school, academic, and
  special librarians who will recommend journals and sources, changes to the ERIC
  Thesaurus, and services and outreach
• Optical Character Recognition (OCR) of 486,000 digitized microfiche
  documents to ensure universal access.

The ERIC website provides an alphabetical list of more than 984 journals currently indexed in the digital library. Other materials-including research syntheses, conference papers, technical reports, and policy papers -are also indexed from more than 760 sources. More than 20 percent of the collection is full-text materials. ERIC, one of the longest-running services offered by the department of education, is part of the National Library of Education in the Institute of Education Sciences. Visit the ERIC website at: http://eric.ed.gov -- IES Newsflash 9/21/09