1. Locating & Accessing
Professional
Literature
Sherri Bryan
SCWriP Summer Institute 2013
www.slideshare.net/SherriSB/scwrip-si-2013

2. Why read professional
literature?
Teachers need to know how to locate and access professional
literature in their field so they can:
promote research-based solutions to educational needs
participate in professional conversations
form professional learning communities and networks
inspire and improve their own teaching.

3. Goals for today
To learn how to locate and access professional literature using primarily
databases and online search engines
More specifically, you will learn:
•how and where to look for relevant articles in an expedient fashion;
•how to search effectively
•how to access the full-text of articles
•how to utilize Web 2.0 technologies in your search for professional
literature.
Ultimate goal:
For you to have confidence in your own abilities to locate professional
literature in your field independently in the future.

4. Locating professional literature using ERIC

5. ERIC overview
“ERIC provides unlimited access to more than 1.4 million
bibliographic records of journal articles and other education-
related materials, with hundreds of new records added multiple
times per week. If possible, links to full text in Adobe PDF format
are included.”
Overview: Page navigation and other essential tools
•Basic search
•Advanced search
•Search and browse the thesaurus
•Help and tutorials

6. Search Tools 101
• Quotation marks (phrase searching)
• Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT)
• Truncation (*)
• ERIC descriptors (using the thesaurus)
• Other search limiters (advanced search)
Try it out!

7. You found it! Now how do you get it?
• Using resources available in ERIC
• WorldCat at www.worldcat.org

8. Accessing the literature
Google Books (books)
•http://books.google.com/
Google Scholar (professional journal articles and books)
•http://scholar.google.com/
Open Access/Open Source --Directory of Open Access Journals
•http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=subject&cpid=127&uiLanguage=en
Using a library database subscription
•http://www.library.ucsb.edu/
•http://www.sbplibrary.org/ (InfoTrac)
•Your school library

9. Using a library database

10. Utilizing Web 2.0 technologies in the search
for professional literature
• Google (more—even more) https://www.google.com/
• Blogs http://blogsearch.google.com/
• Twitter
http://novemberlearning.com/resources/handouts/popular-
education-hashtags-on-twitter/
• RSS feeds (ERIC, many professional blogs)
• “Newsletters” to your inbox