This research guide is intended as an overview of library resources and services of particular relevance for students in Dr. Fenot Aklog’s Spring 2017 course ITSF 4009, Introduction to Research Methods in International and Comparative Education. The resources, primarily electronic and accessible on and off campus, have been selected as ones supporting the 
objectives of the course, i.e., “to introduce students to the concepts, methods and applications of empirical research in international and comparative education (ICE).” This guide also includes a section describing research consultation and assistance services and options for document retrieval and delivery available to all members of the Teachers College community.
Library Resources
Online Catalogs
Periodical Indexes
Federated Search Engines
Encyclopedias and Dictionaries
E-Collections
Handbooks of Research
Reviews of Research
Citation Indexes
Digital Archives
Bibliography and Citation Management Programs
Library Services and Publications
All students, faculty, and researchers also have access to a number of important library services and publications provided to support and facilitate research and study in their particular programs and disciplines.
Online Catalogs
EDUCAT – The most definitive record of the holdings of the Gottesman Libraries at Teachers College, including books, e-books, journals, e-journals, dissertations, media, and other specialized collections of all kinds.
See our library’s video tutorial on searching EDUCAT.
CLIO – The union catalog of Columbia University Libraries (exclusive of the libraries of Teachers College, the Columbia Law School, and Jewish Theological Seminary), providing the most definitive record of individual libraries’ holdings of books, e-books, journals, e-journals, dissertations, media, and other specialized collections of all kinds.
WorldCat – The union catalog of the contents of over 10,000 libraries worldwide, providing the means to do exhaustive searching by author, title, subject, and numerous other criteria and to find locations for specific items in libraries nearby and elsewhere.
See our library’s video tutorial on searching WorldCat.
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Periodical Indexes
Academic Search Premier – A multidisciplinary database providing full text for more than 4,600 journals, including nearly 3,900 peer-reviewed titles. PDF backfiles to 1975 or further are available for well over one hundred journals. See also Academic Search Complete, a scholarly, multidisciplinary full-text database, with more than 8,500 full-text periodicals, including more than 7,300 peer-reviewed journals. The database features PDF content going back as far as 1887.
ERIC – Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education to provide extensive access to educational-related periodical literature, ERIC (which stands for Educational Resources Information Center) provides coverage of conferences, meetings, government documents, theses, dissertations, reports, audiovisual media, bibliographies, directories, books, and monographs. In addition to this version, made available via the ProQuest platform, ERIC is also accessible via the U.S. government ERIC site and through Ebsco ERIC.
Education Full Text – Provides comprehensive coverage of an international range of English-language periodicals, monographs, and yearbooks. Indexing coverage begins June 1983; abstracts are included beginning spring 1994; full text of some journals is available beginning in January 1996.
Education Index Retro – Provides cover-to-cover indexing for an international range of English-language periodicals and yearbooks; coverage from 1929 through mid-1983.
Education Research Complete – Provides indexing and abstracts for more than 2,100 journals, as well as full text for more than 1,200 journals, and includes full text for nearly 500 books and monographs.
FRANCIS – An international, multilingual, multidisciplinary database providing extensive coverage of the social sciences and humanities.
International Bibliography of the Social Sciences – A valuable online resource for social science and interdisciplinary research, IBSS includes over two million bibliographic references to journal articles and to books, reviews and selected chapters dating back to 1951, providing broad coverage of international material and incorporating over 100 languages and countries.
International Political Science Abstracts – Indexes and abstracts articles in the field of political science (including the sub-fields of public administration, political theory, and international relations) published in journals and yearbooks published worldwide.
PAIS Index – Contains citations to journal articles, books, government documents, statistical directories, “gray literature,” research reports, conference reports, publications of international agencies, and Internet resources pertaining to public affairs and public policy issues; coverage from 1915 to present.
Professional Development Collection – Designed for professional educators, this database provides a highly specialized collection of nearly 520 high-quality education journals, including more than 350 peer-reviewed titles. The database also contains more than 200 educational reports.
ProQuest – Provides broad multidisciplinary coverage of scholarly journals, newspapers, dissertations, and other types of publications; for international coverage and access to full texts of dissertations only, searchDigital Dissertations, a subset of ProQuest.
PsycINFO – Covers the scholarly literature in the psychological, social, behavioral, and health sciences.
Social Sciences Full Text – Provides coverage of English-language journals across social science disciplines, with indexing from 1983, abstracting from 1984, and select access to full text from 1984 to the present.
SocINDEX with Full Text – Offers comprehensive coverage of sociology, encompassing all sub-disciplines and closely related areas of study. The database contains full text for more than 860 journals dating back to 1908, more than 830 books and monographs, and over 16,800 conference papers.
Sociological Abstracts – Abstracts and indexes the international literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences, covering such major areas as culture and social structure, family and social welfare, history and theory of sociology, radical sociology, rural and urban sociology, and the sociology of the arts, business, and education.
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts – Provides abstracts and indexing of the international literature of political science and international relations, along with complementary fields, including international law and public administration/policy. The database provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews drawn from over 1,500+ serials publications and also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, dissertations, and working papers.
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Federated Search Engines
Quicksearch (via Columbia University Libraries) – To search the catalog, multiple periodical indexes, and other web resources simultaneously within a variety of subjects and disciplinary subcategories.
Super Search (via Gottesman Libraries) – To search some or all of our periodical indexes, plus EDUCAT and CLIO, simultaneously for books, journal articles, reports, dissertations, etc.
Google Scholar – Provides the means to search for scholarly research across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities, and other web sites.
See our library’s Google Scholar video tutorial.
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Encyclopedias and Dictionaries
Print Resources
Encyclopedia of Educational Research, 6th Edition (1992)
International Encyclopedia of Education (1994)
International Encyclopedia of National Systems of Education (1995)
E-Resources
Encyclopedia of Education (2nd Edition) – The 2003 version of the classic resource in education and related fields.
Europa World Plus – Economic, political, historical, and geographic profiles of 250+ countries and global regions.
International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences – This key reference work comprises 4,000 articles, commissioned by 52 Section Editors, and includes 90,000 bibliographic references as well as comprehensive name and subject indexes.
World Education Encyclopedia (2nd Edition, 2002) – Provides detailed essays on the histories, legal foundations, and primary and secondary educational systems of 233 countries., including coverage of reorganized educational systems and high-interest topics such as technological advances.
World Factbook – Produced by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, this resource provides information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 266 world entities.
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E-Collections (Text, Images, Sound)
CIAO (Columbia International Affairs Online) – “Publishes a wide range of scholarship from 1991 onward that includes working papers from university research institutes, occasional papers series from NGOs, foundation-funded research projects, proceedings from conferences, books, journals and policy briefs. CIAO is also widely-recognized source for teaching materials including original case studies written by leading international affairs experts, course packs of background readings for history and political science classes, and special features like the analysis of a bin Laden recruitment tape with video.”
Ebrary – Online books across a range of subject areas; searchable, under All Subjects, by Education; Geography, Anthropology, Recreation; Language and Literature; Social Sciences, etc., and various sub-topics, and by author, title, and other criteria.
JSTOR – An online archive of over 1,200 leading scholarly journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as select monographs and other materials valuable for academic work. Journals are always included from volume 1, issue 1 and include previous and related titles. Tthe most recently published issues (the past 3-5 years) are generally not available through JSTOR, though they usually are through other e-sources.
Oxford Scholarship Online – Provides the full text of classic and newly published Oxford University Press books in linguistics, literature, neuroscience, psychology, and other disciplines.
RAND Published Research – Contains more than 20,000 RAND Corporation publications, most of which are available as free eBook downloads, dating back to 1946.
SAGE Knowledge – “A database of ebooks and reference books published by SAGE covering the social sciences and education, including such areas as African American Studies, Aged & Gerontology, Anthropology, Communication and Media Studies, Criminology and Criminal Justice, Economics, Education, Gender & Sexuality Studies, History, Politics, Psychology, Social Issues, Social Work & Social Policy, and Sociology.”
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Handbooks of Research
Blackwell Reference Online – Provides full-text access to reference works in the social sciences and humanities; see research handbooks and companions on Cultural Studies, Sociology, and other subject areas.
International Handbook of Comparative Education – This 2009 compendium “brings together leading scholars from around the world, who provide authoritative studies of the old and new epistemic motifs and theoretical strands that have characterized the interdisciplinary field of comparative and international education in the last 50 years” and “analyses the shifting agendas of scholarly research, the different intellectual and ideological perspectives and the changing methodological approaches used to examine and interpret education and pedagogy across different political formations, societies and culture.”
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Reviews of Research
Annual Reviews – Reviews of topics in social sciences and other disciplines published as annual journals; see series for Economics, Political Science, and others.
Review of Educational Research – A publication of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the RER publishes quarterly critical, integrative reviews of research literature bearing on education, including conceptualizations, interpretations, and syntheses of scholarly work.
Review of Research in Education – A publication of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the RRE provides an annual overview and descriptive analysis of selected topics of relevant research literature through critical and synthesizing essays.
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Citation Indexes
Google Scholar – Provides the means to search by author or publication title, and indicates and provides links to works that have cited the documents retrieved.
Scopus – Abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources with smart tools to track, analyze, and visualize research.
Web of Science – Comprising the Arts & Humanities Citation Index, the Social Sciences Citation Index, and the Science Citation Index Expanded, this database supports searching by topic, author, or publication name, and is also a major means for doing cited reference searching, to find articles that cite a person’s work.
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Digital Archives
Academic Commons – Columbia University’s online repository, where current faculty, students, and staff can deposit the results of their scholarly work and research.
Internet Archive – A non-profit digital library offering free universal access to books, movies, and music, as well as 150 billion archived web pages.
PocketKnowledge – The social archive of Teachers College, including unpublished manuscripts and archives from the library’s collections, documents from other departments and administrative offices College-wide, and the work of TC students, faculty, and researchers.
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Bibliography and Citation Management Programs
Citation Management Software – An extensive description of and guide to the use of BibDesk, EndNote, Mendeley, and Zotero, courtesy of Columbia University Libraries.
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Library Services and Publications
Ask a Librarian a Question – To explore a variety of kinds of research support: submit an email reference query to librarians onsite; request a research consultation with a Gottesman librarian; review frequently asked questions via the library’s Knowledge Database.
E-Reserves – Provides online access to digital course readings, including e-journal articles and book chapters, as well as call numbers for physical course reserves materials (books, DVDs, videos, etc.).
Document Delivery – The means to recommend items for purchase and/or to request from other libraries materials (dissertations, book chapters, journal articles, etc.) not available through the Gottesman or Columbia University Libraries.
Learning at the Library – The Gottesman Libraries’ blog via the Pressible platform, including content in many topical areas contributed by library staff members.
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