EDUC 216:
Education, Society, and Social Policy

Fall 2009 · Professor Soo Hong

Contents:

Your reference toolkit
Find books
Find scholarly journal articles
Key websites
Evaluating what you find

• Education Research Guide - Wellesley College Library
• Handbook of Education Policy Research
• Tools for Education Policy Analysis
• Encyclopedia of the Social and Cultural Foundations of Education
• Encyclopedia of Education Law
• Encyclopedia of Bilingual Education
• Encyclopedia of Educational Leadership and Administration
• 21st Century Education: A Reference Handbook

Use the Wellesley library catalog to find books, videos, and journals (not individual articles).

a few tips:

• use a keyword search for simple concepts
  
  - find a book that looks useful, click on the title, then click on the Full Record tab to see the subject terms
  - click on each subject term to find "more like this"
  - for example: a keyword search for Urban schools united states leads to these subject terms (and more books on your topic):
  
  
• Urban schools -- United States
• Urban schools -- United States -- Case studies
• Urban Schools Study And Teaching United States Statistics
  
• for a more complex search, use Advanced Search and combine multiple concepts using AND for best results
• use synonyms to find all the ways your topic is expressed  (study or report or review)
• use truncation to save time (education* for education, educational)
• use parentheses to enclose each concept "string"

Some generally useful subject headings for this course might be:

• Education Bilingual
• United States No Child Left Behind Act Of 2001
• Education and state (for works on educational policy)
• Educational equalization -- United States (for educational equity)

• if our copy of a book is checked out, click on to the right of the title to request a book quickly (2-4 days)
• Search WorldCat to find material we don’t own, click on and request through ILL (interlibrary loan)
• In a hurry? Get a BLC card and borrow the book directly from a nearby library

tips:

• to find the full text of an article, click on the title for the full record, then look for the Find It! @ Wellesley button to link to the full text (online if we have it, or in print, or to the Interlibrary loan request if we don't own the journal)
  
  
• do your searching early and place interlibrary loan requests NOW for books and articles we don't have -- then, when you're ready to start reading and writing, you'll have a great selection of materials. If you wait, your choices will be very limited.

the most useful databases

• ERIC - Education journals/digests - Education articles and reports, 1966 to present (some full text)
• Educator's Reference Complete - Full-text scholarly articles, reports and reference works on educational principles, child development and psychology, and best practices in education, 1980 to present
• PAIS - Public Affairs Information Service - Articles on political, social & economic issues, public affairs, 1915 to present
• PolicyFile - Covers a wide range of public policy topics, linking to reports and papers from think tanks, NGOs, and research organizations, 1990 to present
• CQ Library - reference resource for research in American government, politics, history, public policy, and current affairs
• LexisNexis Academic News - Domestic and international news, 1980's to present
• SocINDEX with Full Text - Index to articles on all aspects of sociology and other social science articles, with full text
• JSTOR is a full-text collection of journal articles from the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. First issues are in the collection but not those from the latest five years. Project Muse has recent issues.
       
  
• Google Scholar
        - excellent tool for interdisciplinary topics that "fall through the cracks" of databases - click on "Find It @ Wellesley" to link directly to our databases if we have the full text, or to request through Interlibrary Loan if we don't

key scholarly e-journals

• American Educational Research Journal - 1964 - present (2006 - present: on-campus access only)
• American Journal of Education - 1979-present
• Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis - 1979 - present (2006 - present: on-campus access only)
• Education Week - 1995 - present

• Visit the course delicious page: http://delicious.com/educ216

Criteria to keep in mind when choosing and using soures:

• Accuracy - Does the author cite her/his sources and are they legitimate?
• Authority - Who wrote the source? Are they credible?
• Objectivity - Does the author have a bias, political or commercial or persuasive?
• Currency - Is this information new or based on outdated sources? Can you tell how current it is?

Wellesley College Library • WCIS • Alana Kumbier • last modified: October 16, 2009