This research guide is intended as an overview of of library resources and services of particular relevance for students in Professor Felicia Moore Mensah’s course MSTC 5001, Qualitative Research Methods in Science 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 qualitative research methods with a special focus on science education. The 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
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.
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) are the official subject terms prescribed by the Library of Congress for the cataloging of books and are in use in essentially all academic libraries. To find works pertaining to subjects relating to qualitative research, science education, and related subjects, it may be useful to use some of the subject terms, or combinations of terms, listed below when searching the online catalogs of libraries at Teachers College, Columbia University, and other institutions.
Case method
Ethnology [use for Ethnography]
Grounded theory
Mixed methods research
Narrative inquiry (Research method)
Phenomenology
Qualitative research
Science — Study and teaching
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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.
Applied Science & Technology Full Text – Indexes international English-language periodicals in the applied sciences and technology. Areas covered include engineering, chemistry, mathematics, physics, computer technology, and energy-related disciplines.
Biological Abstracts – An index with abstracts to periodicals in biology and the life sciences. Provides access to biological and medical research findings, clinical studies, and discoveries of new organisms. Coverage is from 1969 to present and is international. See also Biological Abstracts Archive databases covering 1926 through 1968.
BioMed Central – Provides access to 207 open access biological and biomedical research journals, as well as current reports and meeting abstracts. BioMed Central offers information about current controlled trials, as well as topics in modern biology.
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.
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, through Ebsco ERIC, and via all of these providers on the Columbia University Libraries website.
General Science Full Text – The H. W. Wilson science database comprised of abstracts, bibliographic indexing, and full text material from scholarly sources and specialized magazines. Indexing begins in 1984; full-text coverage in 1995.
GeoRef – Over 3 million references to geoscience journal articles, books, maps, conference papers, reports, and theses.
GreenFILE – Research database covering all aspects of the human impact on the environment, including content on global warming, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more.
Oceanic Abstracts – Focused on worldwide technical literature pertaining to the marine and brackish-water environment, the database covers marine biology and physical oceanography, fisheries, aquaculture, non-living resources, meteorology, and geology, plus environmental, technological, and legislative topics.
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, search Digital Dissertations, a subset of ProQuest.
PsycINFO – Covers the scholarly literature in the psychological, social, behavioral, and health sciences.
Water Resources Abstracts – Summaries of the world’s technical and scientific literature on water-related topics, covering the characteristics, conservation, control, pollution, treatment, use, and management of water resources, from 1967- .
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Federated Search Engines
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.
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.
See our library’s Google Scholar video tutorial.
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Encyclopedias
Print Resources
Encyclopedia of Educational Research (1992)
E-Resources
AccessScience from McGraw-Hill (The Online Encyclopedia of Science and Technology) – Full access to over 8,500 articles, 115,000 dictionary terms, 15,000 illustrations and graphics, bibliographies containing more than 28,000 literature citations, and frequent research updates in all areas of science and technology. Also includes biographies of more than 2,000 well-known scientists.
Encyclopedia of Astronomy and Astrophysics – Full text of over 2,750 articles, plus sophisticated search and retrieval functionality, and links to the primary literature.
Encyclopedia of Education (2nd Edition) – The 2003 version of the classic resource in education and related fields.
Encyclopedia of Evolution – A comprehensive guide to the essentials of evolutionary biology, surveying essential concepts and theories, present methods, models, and findings, and discussing both the history of the field and current controversies; topics include Darwin, natural selection, human origins, behavioral ecology, diversity, mathematical models, and cell and developmental biology.
Encyclopedia of Global Change – Encompassing tsunamis, elephant conservation, ocean pollution, mining regulation, and permafrost melt, the 300 authoritative articles in this unique and wide-ranging encyclopedia investigate all types of phenomena that change life on Earth.
Encyclopedia of Life Sciences – A fully searchable collection of articles by scientists and historians in the fields of biochemistry and physiology, cell biology, developmental biology, ecology, evolution, genetics, immunology, molecular biology, neuroscience, microbiology and virology, plant science, structural biology, science and society.
Encyclopedia of Science Education – “Aimed at graduate students, researchers, developers in science education and science education research . . . The topics to be covered encompass all areas of science education and it includes biographical entries on science educators, as well as educators whose work has had an impact on science education as a research field.”
The Senses: A Comprehensive Reference – 300 articles describing current knowledge on the anatomy, physiology, and molecular biology of sensory organs; topics covered include the perception, psychophysics, and higher order processing of sensory information, as well as disorders and new diagnostic and treatment methods.
Van Nostrand’s Scientific Encyclopedia – One of the most authoritative and accessible general scientific references available. Topics covered include animal science, anatomy, astronomy, atmospheric science, chemistry, computer science, earth science, energy sources, information science, life science, mathematics, physics, planetary science, plant science, space science, and a host of other subjects.
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E-Collections
BioOne – Provides access to critical, peer-reviewed research in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences through collaboration among scientific societies, publishers, and libraries.
Ebrary – Online books across a range of subject areas; searchable, under All Subjects, by Science, Technology, 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. The 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.
SAGE Education Full-Text Collection – A subset of Sage Journals Online, this database provides access to and advanced searching of the full text of 36 education-related journals.
Wiley InterScience – Provides full text access to journals, reference works, books, and databases published by Wiley in all the science disciplines.
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Handbooks of Research
Print Resources
Handbook of Research on Science Education (2006) [see e-version below]
Handbook of Research on Science Teaching and Learning (1993)
International Handbook of Science Education (2003)
E-Resources
Handbook of College Science Teaching – The 38 chapters are organized into eight sections dealing with attitudes and motivations; active learning; factors affecting learning; innovative teaching approaches; use of technology; special challenges; pre-college science instruction; and improving instruction.
Handbook of Research Design in Mathematics and Science Education – Offers 32 chapters in seven sections: the need to address priority problems; reflecting on instruments and methods; teaching experiments; classroom-based research; clinical methods; curriculum design as research; and toward assessment design. Chapters cover topics such as standards-based reform, transformative teaching, and technology design.
Handbook of Research on Science Education – Intended as a comprehensive research handbook for the field, this work includes chapters on various aspects of science education within five organizing categories: Science Learning; Culture, Gender, and Society and Science Learning; Science Teaching; Curriculum and Assessment; and Science Teacher Education.
Second International Handbook of Science Education – In this 2012 research handbook more than 100 leading scholars from the global science education community contributed 96 chapters in 11 sections focusing on sociocultural perspectives and urban education; learning and conceptual change; teacher education and professional development; equity and social justice; assessment and evaluation; curriculum and reform; argumentation and nature of science; out-of-school learning; learning environments; literacy and language; and research methods.
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Reviews of Research
Annual Reviews – Reviews of topics in biomedical, physical, and social sciences published as annual journals; see series for Astronomy and Astrophysics; Biochemistry; Cell and Developmental Biology; Earth and Planetary Sciences; Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics; and many 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.
See our library’s Citation Indexes video tutorial on citation searching via the Web of Science and Google Scholar.
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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, Papers, Mendeley, and Zotero, including a comparison of their relative merits, produced by the Columbia University Libraries’ Digital Science Center.
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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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