Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, ERIC is the major source for Education research materials.  ERIC offers 1.3 million bibliographic records to journal articles and other education-related materials, with hundreds of new records added each week. While ERIC is freely searchable via the Internet, the ULS version of ERIC also provides links to all the online journal material at the University of Pittsburgh. You can access ERIC from the Databases A-Z  page. 

Create complex searches by combining multiple keywords.  Once you decide on your keywords, you can combine them to create focused complex searches.

Field Searching:  Full ERIC records are made up of fields of information -- the title of the item is listed in the Title field, the author’s name is listed in the Author field, etc.  You can use these fields when you search by focusing your search for a term on a particular field. For instance, if you wanted articles by Benjamin Spock, you could search for Spock in AU Author field.  This will give you results where Spock is an author.

Descriptors are disciplinary terms the ERIC database creators use to identify the major topics covered within a particular article, book or item.   Each full ERIC record has descriptors listed in the Descriptor field. 

Pay attention to these descriptors as you search.  Descriptors can suggest other keywords you can use in your searching, or identify a more exact disciplinary term for the concepts you are seeking.

The Thesaurus is an index to all the ERIC descriptors, pointing you to broader and narrower terms you can use in your searching.