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Vanderbilt students, faculty, and staff may search the ERIC database by browsing to the Heard Library Research Databases page and selecting the ERIC link from the list of available databases.
Locating Materials at the Peabody Library
Journal Articles
If a document you find in ERIC has an EJ number and a line showing its source, it is a published article in a journal. The source information will tell you where and when the article was published.
To find the article, see if Vanderbilt owns a copy of the issue of the journal in which the article appeared. You can do this by searching ACORN for the journal name. Scroll down to find out which library owns it and in what form they own it (print, electronic, microform).
If the journal that you need does not appear in ACORN, Vanderbilt does not own it, and you may need to submit an Interlibrary Loan request. If you are having trouble, please ask a librarian for help.
ERIC Documents
If an item in the ERIC database has an ED number, it is an ERIC document. Most of these are items that have not been published elsewhere, such as conference papers, research studies, lesson plans, and curriculum guides.
You are likely to encounter two types of references to ERIC documents. In the ERIC database, they will be designated by an accession number that begins with the letters ED followed by six digits, e.g. ED 123 456.
When you encounter an ERIC document in an ACORN record, its number will be in a different form. The six digits will be the same, but they will be preceeded by the Superintendent of Documents classification number ED 1.310/2. The six digits unique to each report will come right after this SuDocs number, e.g. ED 1.310/2: 123456.
In both examples, the records refer to the same document.
About 92 percent of all ERIC documents appear on microfiche. ERIC documents are filed by their unique six-digit number and are stored in file cabinets in the AV Room. For your convenience, there are microfiche readers/printers in the same room with the file cabinets that hold the fiche. Printing from fiche is free.
About 8 percent of ERIC documents are available in print, and do not appear in the ERIC microfiche series. Usually, these are books or chapters in books. If the ERIC entry says "Document Not Available From EDRS," the item is not in the microfiche set. Check ACORN to see if Vanderbilt owns it.
Searching ERIC on the Internet
- Search ERIC
- Question Archives of the AskERIC Service
A no-cost public access site to search the ERIC database.
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Last updated April 25, 2006 by Chris Benda.