Finding Books

At Kresge Library
Kresge Library's online catalog is called Voyager. It includes books, government documents, journals (but not individual journal articles), and audiovisual materials at OU only. You may search for materials in a number of ways:

Author/Title/Subject search
Look for materials by author, title or by Library of Congress subject headings. (These very specific subject words and phrases are assigned to items to describe their content.) Tips for performing these searches may be found at the bottom of the Library Catalog search screen.

Boolean search
Allows you to search for materials by topic using your own concepts and terms. Combine two or more concepts using AND. For example, the following search... 

              "early childhood education" AND mathematics

...will find books and documents about mathematics in early childhood education. To search for phrases (i.e., two words that are generally found together--"global warming," "Great Lakes," "early childhood," etc.) in the Boolean keyword search mode, enclose the phrase in double quotation marks. 

Other Boolean Search Tips
Limit your search by year, language, format, and location by clicking on the Limits button at the bottom of the page and following the instructions. When you finish setting your limits, click on the Set Limits button. NOTE: Be sure to set your limits BEFORE you input your search terms.

For additional guidance in searching Voyager, consult Kresge Library's Library Catalog tutorial.

Books at Other Libraries
Your research should not be limited to materials owned by OU. Use WorldCat, the combined holdings of thousands of libraries, to identify other books on your topic.

Finding Journal Articles

 

• Education Abstracts (Index to leading journals in education and counseling)
• ERIC (Index to documents, reports and journal articles in education, counseling, etc.)
• Professional Collection (Index to articles on educational topics)
• PsycARTICLES (Full-text articles in general and specialized psychology)
• PsycInfo (Comprehensive index to psychological journals)
• Social Sciences Citation Index (Comprehensive citation index with abstracts to journals in the sciences and social sciences)

Searching ERIC in FirstSearch

 

About the ERIC Database
The ERIC database contains abstracts of education-related documents and journal articles from 1966 to the present; some items are available full text through ERIC. The database is composed of records from two print indexes: Current Index to Journals in Education (CIJE) [INDEX Ref. L 7 .A1 C8], which indexes journal articles, and Resources in Education (RIE) [INDEX Ref. LB 1028 .A1 R4], which indexes all other types of materials, called ERIC documents, in the database. Each item in the ERIC database is assigned an ERIC number beginning with EJ (if the item is a journal article) or ED (if the item is an ERIC document).

Obtaining materials indexed in ERIC
Older ERIC documents (ED) were distributed on microfiche. OU owns most of these documents; they are located in the microfiche cabinets on the 2nd floor, arranged by ED number. Most documents published since 1996 are available online through ERIC.

To obtain copies of journal articles, check the Library Catalog to determine whether OU owns the journal you need by performing a journal title search using the journal title, NOT the article title. If OU does not carry the journal you need, you can obtain a copy of the article through ILLiad, Oakland's online interlibrary loan service. Consult a reference librarian for more information.

Composing Your Search
Compose your search strategy by choosing terms that describe your topic. For help in choosing appropriate terms, consult the Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors, available in the library's reference area or online in ERIC by clicking on the Subjects button at the top of the search screen. For additional guidance in using ERIC, consult Kresge Library's Searching ERIC tutorial.

Limiting Your Search in ERIC
In addition to multiple search terms, you can limit your search in ERIC by time period, by division, by language (although most items are in English), and by publication type.

 By year: To narrow your search by time period, highlight the [NO LIMIT] text in the Years box and type a date range--for example, 1994-1998. To limit your search to one year, you still need to type a date range, but in this case your range would be: 2005-2005.

By document type (ED or EJ): To narrow your search to journal articles (and not ERIC documents), click on the arrow selection button to the right of the Document Type box, and then highlight Journal. To limit your search to ERIC documents (ED), click on the arrow selection button to the right of the division box, and highlight Document.

By record type: Since 1979, all records in ERIC are assigned up to three publication types (ED records have been assigned publication types since 1974). Some publication types, with their code numbers, are listed below. To limit your search by publication type, in a search box type pt:***, where the asterisks are replaced by the publication type's code. For example, type pt:143 to limit your search to research articles. You may also type 143 in the search box, then choose Record type from the Index pull-down menu.

Finding Information on the Internet

There is a wide variety of information available on the Internet; some of it useful, much of it not. Remember that ANYONE can publish ANYTHING on the Internet, regardless of whether s/he is qualified to do so. Therefore, as a researcher, you must be careful to evaluate the information that you find for accuracy, currency, authority, and objectivity. Listed below are some resources that you may find helpful.

The tools listed on the library's Search the Internet page may be useful in finding other early childhood education sites.

Other Research Avenues

People: Note the prominent people who are researching and writing on your topic. Consider emailing or contacting experts for additional information, new perspectives, recent findings, etc.

Browsing shelves: In libraries, books on the same subject are shelved together. When you find a book that's relevant to your topic, look at other books near it; they may also be helpful. Additionally, the OU library uses the Library of Congress (LC) classification to organize its books; therefore, if you are visiting another library that uses LC classification (usually college and university libraries), check the same call number range that was helpful to you at OU for books on the same topic.