Facts and Background Information Selected print and electronic encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks, etc. Books Locate items in the library catalog and other libraries. Articles Use indexes to search for articles in journals, proceedings, etc. Websites Recommended academic, professional, and learned societies sites, and more. Contact a Librarian

Below are a few frequently used sources for the study of education. Interdisciplinary indexes such as Expanded Academic ASAP, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Social Sciences Index also cover education. These can be found in the research guide to General Social Sciences. See also the research guides to Child Development and to Psychology. Please consult with a reference librarian for help with many sources in your topic. Internet resources require a Tufts I.D. number for off-campus access (authorized users statement).

Facts and Background Information     [back to top]

Subject specific reference materials can help you to gain broad-based knowledge of your field through vocabulary, factual information, additional references, and bibliographies. Some suggested print sources:

Handbook of educational psychology

Handbook of research on curriculum

International encyclopedia of national systems of education

Thesaurus of ERIC descriptors

Sage E-Reference

Doing a subject search in the catalog allows you to retrieve specific types of sources. For example:

Special education - United States - Handbooks, manuals, etc.

Education - Dictionaries

In addition, the following electronic resources provide valuable information:

Educational Testing Service Test Collection
Contains descriptions of over 20,000 tests that reside in the library of Educational Testing Service

Mental Measurements Yearbook (How to search)
A guide to standardized psychological and educational tests. Includes references to reviews, information about the tests, and how to obtain them.

Find Books     [back to top]

You can search for books about education in the library catalog in several ways:

Keyword Searching

Type in words that describe your topic, for example:

High School and Education

Special Education and Curriculum

Subject searching

If you know the Library of Congress subject heading used to describe your area of research, you can search for a particular subject. If you don’t know the Library of Congress Subject Headings, speak to a librarian for help. Some examples of subject searches are:

Communication in education

Education

Education, Secondary

Sex differences in education

Books on education can be found under the call number range L7-LT501.

Find books in other libraries

To locate books in other Boston Library Consortium libraries and request them, use the Boston Library Consortium Catalogs. To locate books in many libraries throughout the world, use WorldCat.

Find Articles     [back to top]

For more information on searching article indexes, see our Database Searching Tips page (also available in PDF).

Child Development Abstracts and Bibliography 1927-
Print index to books and journals. Includes over 2,000 abstracts and references annually.

Contemporary Psychology: A Journal of Reviews 1956-
Print journal includes critical reviews of books and films in all fields of psychology.

Current Contents Connect 2001-
A current awareness database with a multidisciplinary focus, covering over 8,000 of the world's scholarly journals grouped into the following broad disciplinary areas: Agriculture, Biology, & Environmental Sciences; Art & Humanities; Clinical Medicine; Engineering, Computing & Technology; Life Sciences; Physical, Chemical & Earth Sciences; Social & Behavioral Sciences. Also included is access to ISI Current Web Contents.

Education Abstracts 1983-
Index to more than 450 education journals. Includes abstracts from 1994.

Education Index. H.W. Wilson, 1929-2001
Print equivalent of Education Abstracts, with coverage from 1929.

ERIC (How to search) 1966-
This major education index includes citations and abstracts to journals, books, and documents. Includes material in child psychology. Tisch Library subscribes to ERIC documents on microfiche from 1975 to the present and subscribes to ERIC documents electronically from 1996 to the present.

Exceptional Child Education Resources 1985-
Print index provides indexing and abstracts to resources in special education and gifted education.

International Bibliography of the Social Sciences
The IBSS has more than two million references to articles and books going back to 1951 in the social sciences. It is produced by the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts 1967-
Print index provides abstracts to over 1,500 journals and reports, including foreign material.

Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (How to search)
The database covers all aspects of the study of language including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. Complete coverage is also given to various fields of linguistics including descriptive, historical, comparative, theoretical and geographical linguistics.

Psychological Abstracts 1927-2000
The most comprehensive print index to the literature of psychology. Indexes and abstracts more than 1,200 English-language journals, reports and books.

PsycINFO 1872-
PsycInfo indexes the professional and academic literature in psychology and related disciplines, covering dissertations and over 1300 journals in more than 30 languages as well as book chapters and books in English. Over 50,000 references are added annually.

Electronic journals

Periodicals held by Tufts are listed in the catalog. Holdings in all formats are unified in one record, and most entries for journals held in digital format contain a hyperlink to the source; searches in the catalog enable one to follow these links directly. A supplementary list of electronic journals is on the Tisch homepage under Electronic Journals. For an example of a catalog search for a journal, set the catalog’s Type of Search to "Journal Title," and type in Brookings Papers on Education Policy.

Many education journals held in digital format are parts of Project Muse, JSTOR, Science Direct, Blackwell-Synergy or Wiley Interscience. Although these databases include search engines for the journals they contain, the indexes listed above are the most comprehensive and authoritative sources for the literature of the discipline, and frequently link directly to the journal article itself.

Websites     [back to top]

Tufts University Department of Education

ACADEME This Week: Chronicle of Higher Education

Child Care & Early Education Research Connections
Research in child care and early education and the use of that research in policy making. Includes datasets, statistics, instruments and much more.

Children's Literature Web Guide

EPAA Journal

Eurostat
Under the Population and Social Conditions Theme tab is a searchable database of Education and Training Statistics from the European Union, the United States, and Japan.

National Center for Education Statistics

National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education (NCBE)

UNESCO Institute for Statistics
Education is identified as a core theme on this United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization site. Statistics related to Access and Participation, Efficiency, Resources, Literacy and Attainment, and Education System characteristics are available from over 200 countries.

U.S. Dept. of Education

World Bank EdStats
"The World Bank's comprehensive Database of education statistics." Report feature allows users to compile unique statistical reports for countries, country groups and education indicators.

Contact a Librarian     [back to top]

Edward C. Oberholtzer. Contact for questions about library collections.
Laurie Sabol. Contact for reference questions and instruction requests.