Research Guide for: Curriculum and Instruction

Indexes | Sources | Guides | Tools | Services | For Faculty | Collection

Library Research Notes for Education

1. Ingram Library: http://www.westga.edu/~library/
2. "Databases" OR "Journals & Magazines/Databases"
3. "Education"

Research Tools
Tool/Resource	Why use it?	Where to access it?
1. Databases	To search by topic for articles (and sometimes books and other items).	Browse to the Ingram Library Homepage: http://www.westga.edu/~library Access the "Databases" or "Journals & Magazines/Databases" Access the "Education" Subject Area Direct: http://www.westga.edu/~library/databases Recommended: Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 ebrary Thousands of eBooks from leading publishers as well as sophisticated technology to assist with the research process. ERIC at EBSCOhost Educational Resources Information Center. Index and abstracts of articles, books, and documents covering education research and practice. JSTOR Full-text Journal Backfiles covering Business, Language, Literature, Mathematics, Statistics, Music, Science, Biology, Ecology, Botany and other fields. Includes literary criticism of short stories, plays, poems, poetry, and novels. Mental Measurements Yearbook Full-text information on commercially-available, standardized English-language tests covering educational skills, personality, vocational aptitude, psychology, and related areas. Includes test name and classification, authors, publisher, publication date, price, time requirements, existence of validity and reliability data, score descriptions, levels, and intended populations. Professional Development Collection - Education at EBSCOhost Designed for professional educators, provides a specialized collection of over 500 full text journals, including more than 300 peer-reviewed titles. This is the most comprehensive and most valuable collection of full text education journals in the world. Includes, indexing and abstracts for more than 800 journals. ProQuest Education Journals Offering complete information on hundreds of educational topics, this database covers almost 400 leading journals in the field. Covers not only the literature on primary, secondary, and higher education but also special education, home schooling, adult education, and hundreds of related topics. Great Resource.
2. Journal Locator	To locate a full-text journal.	Browse to the Ingram Library Homepage: http://www.westga.edu/~library Access "Journal Locator" or "Journals & Magazines/Journal Locator" Search by journal title Direct: http://www.westga.edu/~library/cgi-bin/libal.cgi From within the results of a database search, try "Findit@UWG" to get the article.
3. Library Catalog	To locate books, journals and other items on the library shelves (some on-line, like NetLibrary).	Browse to the Ingram Library Homepage: http://www.westga.edu/~library Access the "Catalog" or "Books and more"
4. Internet	To locate all kinds of weird things, some worthwhile.	Start with Google - http://www.google.com Google is a good Internet search engine that isn't over-run with commercial junk. NOTE!!!! Be VERY careful about trusting the validity of what you find on the Internet. ANYONE can post ANYTHING to the Internet . much of it absolutely wrong information.

Research Technique

• Be Persistent
  What you want is probably out there. If you aren't finding it, keep trying different ways of searching.
• Start Broad
  Start your searches with general and single terms like "curriculum" and "reading." Then, add other general terms and limits to get more exact results. If you are finding too few articles, you are being too specific. Be careful with phrase searches like "reading curriculum for early childhood education." Instead, try "reading" and "curriculum" and "early childhood" and "education" as separate terms/phrases.
• Be Playful
  Try the different choices available for searching and see what happens. Have a goal and notice the differences when you change settings or add new/different terms/phrases. Playing around with the searching won't hurt anything. It is the BEST way to learn.

Finding Studies and Research with Findings

• Do keyword searches on words like: study, results, findings, conclusions, methodology, research, ...
• In ERIC, try limiting on the Publication Types (Pub Type) named "Reports..."
  

More Help

• Ingram Library Guides and Tutorials
  Check here for information about and help with using Ingram Library resources and services.
• Email me, Chris Huff at chuff@westga.edu
  Or Use our comment form