The National Library of Education by Malcolm Brantz Director, The Learning Resource Center Arapahoe Community College Littleton, Colorado This is the fourth in a series about our national library treasures. The Library of Congress is our largest and most traditional national library. The National Library of Medicine is the most innovative and influential member of this group. The National Agricultural Library has a shrinking user population but has collected an exhaustive collection of materials dealing with the topic including private studies and pamphlets from around the world. Our focus moves to the National Library of Education (NLE). NLE is the newest library and has tried to take advantage the information revolution. President Bill Clinton signed "Educate America Act" into law on March 31, 1994. Part of that act included the formal establishment of a National Library of Education. NLE's 2002 budget was $12 million with 80 percent of that money being allotted to ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center). ERIC, the indexing service for educators, was established in 1966 and taken over by the NLE in 1994 NLE is divided into three broad subdivisions: a). Reference and information services; b). Collection Development and Technical Services and c). Resource Sharing and Cooperation. The library, located in Washington, DC near the capital, is housed on two floors. NLE's reference desk is staffed 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. NLE has a modest collection of 100,000-plus books, about 850 periodical subscriptions, and a large number of microforms. In comparison, Columbia University's Teachers College library has 603,000 volumes. I was unable to get access to the online catalog for NLE main library. This collection is used mostly by the Department of Education. A complete history leading to the formation of the NLE is accessible on the library's main Web page. A quote from this history sums up the current condition of the library: That the education library has fallen short of the national library level is easily explainable by the fact that it has never been provided with sufficient financial or personnel resources. Thus, the education library has maintained throughout its history an in-between status, being more than an in-house agency library and less than a national library. NLE has accomplishments and important services despite the above shortcomings. ERIC index should be considered the major service/product from NLE. Let's spend some time reviewing this service. "ERIC is the largest education database in the world--containing more than one million records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books." Sixteen American institutions in 2001 received an average of $538,000 each to provide index records for the ERIC database. For example, UCLA provides: "Community Colleges--covers development, administration, and evaluation of two-year public and private community and junior colleges, technical institutes, and two-year branch university campuses." George Washington University provides: "Higher Education--addresses college and university problems, programs, students, curricular and instructional programs, and institutional research." Eleven of the 16 clearinghouses are located at major universities with the remaining five at organizational locations specializing in that subfield. From the 2001 annual report, "The entire bibliographic database, covering the period 19662001, contains 448,312 abstracts of 'documents' and 628,868 abstracts of journal articles totaling 1,077,180 records." "Documents" are specially-defined items that range from government funded reports to opinion papers. Journal articles comprise approximately 60 percent of the ERIC database. While the National Library of Medicine subscribes to 20,300 serials, NLE subscribes to around 850 journals not counting newsletters, etc. that are also received. After checking several sources, it appears that education as a subject field has around 3,000 serials world wide. In 2001, the greatest number of "document" entries into the ERIC database came from three subject areas: adult, career, and vocational education (1,146 documents); higher education (1,042 documents); and reading, English, and communication (1,003 documents). The largest numbers of journal articles were processed in educational and information technology (1,862 articles); higher education (1,692 articles); and counseling and student services (1,675 articles). ERIC's guides are divided between subcategories such as "classroom use" "instruction materials for the learner" "teaching guides for the teacher" to one category which is "non-classroom use" and says it's for administrative, support staff, parents, teachers and even the clergy. ERIC also holds reports. These are divided up by categories such as evaluative or feasibility project descriptions to research and technical reports. Also included in ERIC are doctoral dissertations, master's theses and practicum papers. ERIC is a microform-based service. Retrieval of materials is through a six-digit number with a two-letter prefix. The prefix is very important. ED is for "educational document" and nearly 90 percent are published as microform items. The remainder must be requested from ERIC for use. The second type is EJ, which stands for educational journals. ERIC has opinions and a relatively new category called full-text documents. I did a simple search with "opinions" and "full text" and received 30 hits all being ED. Not a large number but one that was listed was titled "Homeschooling" and dated 2001. At the bottom of the ERIC abstract was a button "OBTAIN" and I tried it. The full document appears with the following listed at the bottom: This publication was prepared with funding from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement. I didn't fare so well when I enter the term "automotive." However, when I cancelled the full-text requirement, 883 records were retrieved. Most records were EDs with a few journal articles. I got 55 records for a search on "back pain." Another 435 records were retrieved when I used "horses" to search. "Hunting" produced 2,283 records. "Assessment" returned over 120,000 records. Obviously, the search needed refinement so there would be fewer hits. ERIC is available free of charge through the Web and we have a link from our library's Web page. I've tried to do more in comparing NLE with the other national libraries. A national library can't collect if it's not published. American book production in 2000 reported 3,378 for education, 1,073 for agriculture and 6,234 for medicine. The average price for hardcover books was $59.75 for education, $55.40 for agriculture and $90.03 for medicine (page 548 for the Bowker Annual 2002) . Finally, let's look at who benefits most from NLE: educators. In the Statistical Abstracts for the United States 2001, the most recent figures listed for 1998, there were 105,968 earned BA degrees, 114,691 earning master's degrees and 6,729 earned doctorates. This compares to 23,284 earning agriculture and natural resource bachelors degrees, 4,475 master's and 1,302 earning doctorates. The same year, a total of 15,424 earned MD degrees and another 4,032 received Doctorate in Dentistry. This should be added to 84,379 earning health sciences bachelor degrees, 39,260 master's and 2,484 doctorates. Nursing represents the largest group in general health. The reason for the large number of master's degrees being earned by education majors is the fact that after employed, the K-12 program highly encourages and rewards the completion of additional degrees. It appears that while there exist a sizeable population in education, the amount of publishing is small compared to medicine. I hope that you have enjoyed the review of these national treasures and have had your awareness of what your ACC library is in membership with. If you will bear with me over the next two issues of our newsletter, I'd like to suggest that we could use a fifth national library. I hope to make a cogent case using numbers of people, publications, research, potential impact and outcomes in support for this library. Your feedback will be most helpful on this matter. (continued from page 1) NLE is divided into three broad subdivisions: a). Reference and information services; b). Collection Development and Technical Services and c). Resource Sharing and Cooperation. The library, located in Washington, DC near the capital, is housed on two floors. NLE's reference desk is staffed 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. NLE has a modest collection of 100,000-plus books, about 850 periodical subscriptions, and a large number of microforms. In comparison, Columbia University's Teachers College library has 603,000 volumes. I was unable to get access to the online catalog for NLE main library. This collection is used mostly by the Department of Education. A complete history leading to the formation of the NLE is accessible on the library's main Web page. A quote from this history sums up the current condition of the library: That the education library has fallen short of the national library level is easily explainable by the fact that it has never been provided with sufficient financial or personnel resources. Thus, the education library has maintained throughout its history an in-between status, being more than an in-house agency library and less than a national library. NLE has accomplishments and important services despite the above shortcomings. ERIC index should be considered the major service/product from NLE. Let's spend some time reviewing this service. "ERIC is the largest education database in the world--containing more than one million records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books." Sixteen American institutions in 2001 received an average of $538,000 each to provide index records for the ERIC database. For example, UCLA provides: "Community Colleges--covers development, administration, and evaluation of two-year public and private community and junior colleges, technical institutes, and two-year branch university campuses." George Washington University provides: "Higher Education--addresses college and university problems, programs, students, curricular and instructional programs, and institutional research." Eleven of the 16 clearinghouses are located at major universities with the remaining five at organizational locations specializing in that subfield. From the 2001 annual report, "The entire bibliographic database, covering the period 19662001, contains 448,312 abstracts of 'documents' and 628,868 abstracts of journal articles totaling 1,077,180 records." "Documents" are specially-defined items that range from government funded reports to opinion papers. Journal articles comprise approximately 60 percent of the ERIC database. While the National Library of Medicine subscribes to 20,300 serials, NLE subscribes to around 850 journals not counting newsletters, etc. that are also received. After checking several sources, it appears that education as a subject field has around 3,000 serials world wide. In 2001, the greatest number of "document" entries into the ERIC database came from three subject areas: adult, career, and vocational education (1,146 documents); higher education (1,042 documents); and reading, English, and communication (1,003 documents). The largest numbers of journal articles were processed in educational and information technology (1,862 articles); higher education (1,692 articles); and counseling and student services (1,675 articles). ERIC's guides are divided between subcategories such as "classroom use" "instruction materials for the learner" "teaching guides for the teacher" to one category which is "non-classroom use" and says it's for administrative, support staff, parents, teachers and even the clergy. ERIC also holds reports. These are divided up by categories such as evaluative or feasibility project descriptions to research and technical reports. Also included in ERIC are doctoral dissertations, master's theses and practicum papers. ERIC is a microform-based service. Retrieval of materials is through a six-digit number with a two-letter prefix. The prefix is very important. ED is for "educational document" and nearly 90 percent are published as microform items. The remainder must be requested from ERIC for use. The second type is EJ, which stands for educational journals. ERIC has opinions and a relatively new category called full-text documents. I did a simple search with "opinions" and "full text" and received 30 hits all being ED. Not a large number but one that was listed was titled "Homeschooling" and dated 2001. At the bottom of the ERIC abstract was a button "OBTAIN" and I tried it. The full document appears with the following listed at the bottom: This publication was prepared with funding from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement. I didn't fare so well when I enter the term "automotive." However, when I cancelled the full-text requirement, 883 records were retrieved. Most records were EDs with a few journal articles. I got 55 records for a search on "back pain." Another 435 records were retrieved when I used "horses" to search. "Hunting" produced 2,283 records. "Assessment" returned over 120,000 records. Obviously, the search needed refinement so there would be fewer hits. ERIC is available free of charge through the Web and we have a link from our library's Web page. I've tried to do more in comparing NLE with the other national libraries. A national library can't collect if it's not published. American book production in 2000 reported 3,378 for education, 1,073 for agriculture and 6,234 for medicine. The average price for hardcover books was $59.75 for education, $55.40 for agriculture and $90.03 for medicine (page 548 for the Bowker Annual 2002) . Finally, let's look at who benefits most from NLE: educators. In the Statistical Abstracts for the United States 2001, the most recent figures listed for 1998, there were 105,968 earned BA degrees, 114,691 earning master's degrees and 6,729 earned doctorates. This compares to 23,284 earning agriculture and natural resource bachelors degrees, 4,475 master's and 1,302 earning doctorates. The same year, a total of 15,424 earned MD degrees and another 4,032 received Doctorate in Dentistry. This should be added to 84,379 earning health sciences bachelor degrees, 39,260 master's and 2,484 doctorates. Nursing represents the largest group in general health. The reason for the large number of master's degrees being earned by education majors is the fact that after employed, the K-12 program highly encourages and rewards the completion of additional degrees. It appears that while there exist a sizeable population in education, the amount of publishing is small compared to medicine. I hope that you have enjoyed the review of these national treasures and have had your awareness of what your ACC library is in membership with. If you will bear with me over the next two issues of our newsletter, I'd like to suggest that we could use a fifth national library. I hope to make a cogent case using numbers of people, publications, research, potential impact and outcomes in support for this library. Your feedback will be most helpful on this matter. How Users Contacted ERIC in 2001 Method Number Percent E-mail* 100,758 65.2 Phone 32,345 21.0 Letters/Fax 17,433 11.3 Visits 3,908 2.5 Total 154,444 100.0 Web hits 415,510,276 *The e-mail category includes 34,571 AskERIC requests |
The National Library of Education by Malcolm Brantz Director, The Learning Resource Center Arapahoe Community College Littleton, Colorado This is the fourth in a series about our national library treasures. The Library of Congress is our largest and most traditional national library. The National Library of Medicine is the most innovative and influential member of this group. The National Agricultural Library has a shrinking user population but has collected an exhaustive collection of materials dealing with the topic including private studies and pamphlets from around the world. Our focus moves to the National Library of Education (NLE). NLE is the newest library and has tried to take advantage the information revolution. President Bill Clinton signed "Educate America Act" into law on March 31, 1994. Part of that act included the formal establishment of a National Library of Education. NLE's 2002 budget was $12 million with 80 percent of that money being allotted to ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center). ERIC, the indexing service for educators, was established in 1966 and taken over by the NLE in 1994 NLE is divided into three broad subdivisions: a). Reference and information services; b). Collection Development and Technical Services and c). Resource Sharing and Cooperation. The library, located in Washington, DC near the capital, is housed on two floors. NLE's reference desk is staffed 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. NLE has a modest collection of 100,000-plus books, about 850 periodical subscriptions, and a large number of microforms. In comparison, Columbia University's Teachers College library has 603,000 volumes. I was unable to get access to the online catalog for NLE main library. This collection is used mostly by the Department of Education. A complete history leading to the formation of the NLE is accessible on the library's main Web page. A quote from this history sums up the current condition of the library: That the education library has fallen short of the national library level is easily explainable by the fact that it has never been provided with sufficient financial or personnel resources. Thus, the education library has maintained throughout its history an in-between status, being more than an in-house agency library and less than a national library. NLE has accomplishments and important services despite the above shortcomings. ERIC index should be considered the major service/product from NLE. Let's spend some time reviewing this service. "ERIC is the largest education database in the world--containing more than one million records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books." Sixteen American institutions in 2001 received an average of $538,000 each to provide index records for the ERIC database. For example, UCLA provides: "Community Colleges--covers development, administration, and evaluation of two-year public and private community and junior colleges, technical institutes, and two-year branch university campuses." George Washington University provides: "Higher Education--addresses college and university problems, programs, students, curricular and instructional programs, and institutional research." Eleven of the 16 clearinghouses are located at major universities with the remaining five at organizational locations specializing in that subfield. From the 2001 annual report, "The entire bibliographic database, covering the period 19662001, contains 448,312 abstracts of 'documents' and 628,868 abstracts of journal articles totaling 1,077,180 records." "Documents" are specially-defined items that range from government funded reports to opinion papers. Journal articles comprise approximately 60 percent of the ERIC database. While the National Library of Medicine subscribes to 20,300 serials, NLE subscribes to around 850 journals not counting newsletters, etc. that are also received. After checking several sources, it appears that education as a subject field has around 3,000 serials world wide. In 2001, the greatest number of "document" entries into the ERIC database came from three subject areas: adult, career, and vocational education (1,146 documents); higher education (1,042 documents); and reading, English, and communication (1,003 documents). The largest numbers of journal articles were processed in educational and information technology (1,862 articles); higher education (1,692 articles); and counseling and student services (1,675 articles). ERIC's guides are divided between subcategories such as "classroom use" "instruction materials for the learner" "teaching guides for the teacher" to one category which is "non-classroom use" and says it's for administrative, support staff, parents, teachers and even the clergy. ERIC also holds reports. These are divided up by categories such as evaluative or feasibility project descriptions to research and technical reports. Also included in ERIC are doctoral dissertations, master's theses and practicum papers. ERIC is a microform-based service. Retrieval of materials is through a six-digit number with a two-letter prefix. The prefix is very important. ED is for "educational document" and nearly 90 percent are published as microform items. The remainder must be requested from ERIC for use. The second type is EJ, which stands for educational journals. ERIC has opinions and a relatively new category called full-text documents. I did a simple search with "opinions" and "full text" and received 30 hits all being ED. Not a large number but one that was listed was titled "Homeschooling" and dated 2001. At the bottom of the ERIC abstract was a button "OBTAIN" and I tried it. The full document appears with the following listed at the bottom: This publication was prepared with funding from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement. I didn't fare so well when I enter the term "automotive." However, when I cancelled the full-text requirement, 883 records were retrieved. Most records were EDs with a few journal articles. I got 55 records for a search on "back pain." Another 435 records were retrieved when I used "horses" to search. "Hunting" produced 2,283 records. "Assessment" returned over 120,000 records. Obviously, the search needed refinement so there would be fewer hits. ERIC is available free of charge through the Web and we have a link from our library's Web page. I've tried to do more in comparing NLE with the other national libraries. A national library can't collect if it's not published. American book production in 2000 reported 3,378 for education, 1,073 for agriculture and 6,234 for medicine. The average price for hardcover books was $59.75 for education, $55.40 for agriculture and $90.03 for medicine (page 548 for the Bowker Annual 2002) . Finally, let's look at who benefits most from NLE: educators. In the Statistical Abstracts for the United States 2001, the most recent figures listed for 1998, there were 105,968 earned BA degrees, 114,691 earning master's degrees and 6,729 earned doctorates. This compares to 23,284 earning agriculture and natural resource bachelors degrees, 4,475 master's and 1,302 earning doctorates. The same year, a total of 15,424 earned MD degrees and another 4,032 received Doctorate in Dentistry. This should be added to 84,379 earning health sciences bachelor degrees, 39,260 master's and 2,484 doctorates. Nursing represents the largest group in general health. The reason for the large number of master's degrees being earned by education majors is the fact that after employed, the K-12 program highly encourages and rewards the completion of additional degrees. It appears that while there exist a sizeable population in education, the amount of publishing is small compared to medicine. I hope that you have enjoyed the review of these national treasures and have had your awareness of what your ACC library is in membership with. If you will bear with me over the next two issues of our newsletter, I'd like to suggest that we could use a fifth national library. I hope to make a cogent case using numbers of people, publications, research, potential impact and outcomes in support for this library. Your feedback will be most helpful on this matter. (continued from page 1) NLE is divided into three broad subdivisions: a). Reference and information services; b). Collection Development and Technical Services and c). Resource Sharing and Cooperation. The library, located in Washington, DC near the capital, is housed on two floors. NLE's reference desk is staffed 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. NLE has a modest collection of 100,000-plus books, about 850 periodical subscriptions, and a large number of microforms. In comparison, Columbia University's Teachers College library has 603,000 volumes. I was unable to get access to the online catalog for NLE main library. This collection is used mostly by the Department of Education. A complete history leading to the formation of the NLE is accessible on the library's main Web page. A quote from this history sums up the current condition of the library: That the education library has fallen short of the national library level is easily explainable by the fact that it has never been provided with sufficient financial or personnel resources. Thus, the education library has maintained throughout its history an in-between status, being more than an in-house agency library and less than a national library. NLE has accomplishments and important services despite the above shortcomings. ERIC index should be considered the major service/product from NLE. Let's spend some time reviewing this service. "ERIC is the largest education database in the world--containing more than one million records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books." Sixteen American institutions in 2001 received an average of $538,000 each to provide index records for the ERIC database. For example, UCLA provides: "Community Colleges--covers development, administration, and evaluation of two-year public and private community and junior colleges, technical institutes, and two-year branch university campuses." George Washington University provides: "Higher Education--addresses college and university problems, programs, students, curricular and instructional programs, and institutional research." Eleven of the 16 clearinghouses are located at major universities with the remaining five at organizational locations specializing in that subfield. From the 2001 annual report, "The entire bibliographic database, covering the period 19662001, contains 448,312 abstracts of 'documents' and 628,868 abstracts of journal articles totaling 1,077,180 records." "Documents" are specially-defined items that range from government funded reports to opinion papers. Journal articles comprise approximately 60 percent of the ERIC database. While the National Library of Medicine subscribes to 20,300 serials, NLE subscribes to around 850 journals not counting newsletters, etc. that are also received. After checking several sources, it appears that education as a subject field has around 3,000 serials world wide. In 2001, the greatest number of "document" entries into the ERIC database came from three subject areas: adult, career, and vocational education (1,146 documents); higher education (1,042 documents); and reading, English, and communication (1,003 documents). The largest numbers of journal articles were processed in educational and information technology (1,862 articles); higher education (1,692 articles); and counseling and student services (1,675 articles). ERIC's guides are divided between subcategories such as "classroom use" "instruction materials for the learner" "teaching guides for the teacher" to one category which is "non-classroom use" and says it's for administrative, support staff, parents, teachers and even the clergy. ERIC also holds reports. These are divided up by categories such as evaluative or feasibility project descriptions to research and technical reports. Also included in ERIC are doctoral dissertations, master's theses and practicum papers. ERIC is a microform-based service. Retrieval of materials is through a six-digit number with a two-letter prefix. The prefix is very important. ED is for "educational document" and nearly 90 percent are published as microform items. The remainder must be requested from ERIC for use. The second type is EJ, which stands for educational journals. ERIC has opinions and a relatively new category called full-text documents. I did a simple search with "opinions" and "full text" and received 30 hits all being ED. Not a large number but one that was listed was titled "Homeschooling" and dated 2001. At the bottom of the ERIC abstract was a button "OBTAIN" and I tried it. The full document appears with the following listed at the bottom: This publication was prepared with funding from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement. I didn't fare so well when I enter the term "automotive." However, when I cancelled the full-text requirement, 883 records were retrieved. Most records were EDs with a few journal articles. I got 55 records for a search on "back pain." Another 435 records were retrieved when I used "horses" to search. "Hunting" produced 2,283 records. "Assessment" returned over 120,000 records. Obviously, the search needed refinement so there would be fewer hits. ERIC is available free of charge through the Web and we have a link from our library's Web page. I've tried to do more in comparing NLE with the other national libraries. A national library can't collect if it's not published. American book production in 2000 reported 3,378 for education, 1,073 for agriculture and 6,234 for medicine. The average price for hardcover books was $59.75 for education, $55.40 for agriculture and $90.03 for medicine (page 548 for the Bowker Annual 2002) . Finally, let's look at who benefits most from NLE: educators. In the Statistical Abstracts for the United States 2001, the most recent figures listed for 1998, there were 105,968 earned BA degrees, 114,691 earning master's degrees and 6,729 earned doctorates. This compares to 23,284 earning agriculture and natural resource bachelors degrees, 4,475 master's and 1,302 earning doctorates. The same year, a total of 15,424 earned MD degrees and another 4,032 received Doctorate in Dentistry. This should be added to 84,379 earning health sciences bachelor degrees, 39,260 master's and 2,484 doctorates. Nursing represents the largest group in general health. The reason for the large number of master's degrees being earned by education majors is the fact that after employed, the K-12 program highly encourages and rewards the completion of additional degrees. It appears that while there exist a sizeable population in education, the amount of publishing is small compared to medicine. I hope that you have enjoyed the review of these national treasures and have had your awareness of what your ACC library is in membership with. If you will bear with me over the next two issues of our newsletter, I'd like to suggest that we could use a fifth national library. I hope to make a cogent case using numbers of people, publications, research, potential impact and outcomes in support for this library. Your feedback will be most helpful on this matter. How Users Contacted ERIC in 2001 Method Number Percent E-mail* 100,758 65.2 Phone 32,345 21.0 Letters/Fax 17,433 11.3 Visits 3,908 2.5 Total 154,444 100.0 Web hits 415,510,276 *The e-mail category includes 34,571 AskERIC requests |
Knowledge Research Central |
