EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) is making the government database ERIC available during the government shutdown. ERIC, the Education Resource Information Center, is typically available through the government website (http://eric.ed.gov/) as well as via EBSCO’s EBSCOhost® research platform. Because of the shutdown the government website is unavailable so EBSCO has decided to temporarily open its version of ERIC and make it available at:http://www.ebsco.com/freeERIC .
ERIC provides access to educational literature and resources including access to information from journals included in the Current Index of Journals in Education and Resources in Education Index. It was designed as a national information system to provide access to education literature and resources. According to its website, “ERIC is the world’s largest and most frequently used education digital library.” ERIC provides more than 1.4 million bibliographic records and dates back to 1966.
EBSCO is the provider of hundreds of research databases for academic institutions, public libraries, schools, hospitals and medical institutions, corporations and government organizations. EBSCO Information Services President Tim Collins says the decision to make ERIC available to users while service from the government site is interrupted was an easy one. “We know our users who access ERIC on EBSCOhost find it to be a valuable resource and we understand that having access to a resource like ERIC shut off handicaps some researchers. Therefore, we have decided to provide this temporary access in order to assist these researchers.”
Because of the shutdown, access to the full text of articles and other materials will not be available but researchers will have access to the full set of A&I records on EBSCOhost. Users going tohttp://www.ebsco.com/freeERIC will now see ERIC listed among the other free EBSCO databases such asGreenFILE™ and Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts™ (LISTA).
