This research guide is intended as an overview of library resources and services of particular relevance for students in Dr. Corbin Campbell’s Fall 2014 course ORL 5521, Introduction to Research Methods in 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 help students develop the ability to critically analyze empirical research and synthesize this research in a literature review,” and “to begin to develop an understanding of qualitative and quantitative research design, including the purposes, epistemologies, methodologies, and methods and their application to problems in the field of education.” 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 (Images, Sound, Text, Etc.)
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
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 research methods in 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.
Action research in education
Education — Research
Education — Research — Methodology
Education, Higher — Research
Ethnology [use for Ethnography]
Ethnology — Research
Ethnology — Research — Methodology
Qualitative research
Research — Methodology
Social sciences — Methodology
Social sciences — Research
Social sciences — Research — Methodology
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.
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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.
Humanities & Social Sciences Retrospective – Provides coverage of journal articles in the humanities and social sciences from 1907 through 1984.
Humanities Full Text – Abstracts, bibliographic indexing, and full text from scholarly sources and specialized magazines in the humanities. Indexing begins in 1984, full-text coverage in 1995.
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.
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.
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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)
E-Resources
Encyclopedia of Education (2nd Edition) – The 2003 version of the classic resource in education and related fields.
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.
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E-Collections
Alexander Street Press Databases – Themed collections of print documents, video, and recorded sound across disciplines; notable databases include Alexander Street Literature (cross-searchable collections covering the literatures of place, race, and gender), Caribbean Literature (a collection of poetry and fiction produced in the Caribbean during the 19th and 20th centuries), Ethnographic Video Online (intended to be a visual encyclopedia of human behavior and culture, online in streaming video), and North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories (personal views of what it meant to immigrate to the United States and Canada between 1880 and 1950).
Ebrary – Online books across a range of subject areas; searchable, under All Subjects, by Fine Arts; History (General) and History of Europe; Language and Literature; Music and Books on Music; Philosophy, Psychology, Religion, 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.
LexisNexis Academic – An interdisciplinary, full-text database of over 18,000 sources including newspapers, journals, wire services, newsletters, company reports and SEC filings, case law, government documents, transcripts of broadcasts, and selected reference works.
Oxford Scholarship Online – Provides the full text of classic and newly published Oxford University Press books in economics and finance, law, political science, and other disciplines.
SAGE Education Full-Text Collection – A subset of Sage Journals Online, provides access to and advanced searching of the full text of 36 education-related journals.
SAGE Psychology Full-Text Collection – Provides access to the full text of 34 psychology-related journals from SAGE Publications.
SAGE Sociology Full-Text Collection – A subset of Sage Journals Online, provides access to and advanced searching of the full text of 36 sociology-related journals.
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Handbooks of Research
Print Resources
Handbook of Research on Curriculum (1992)
Handbook of Research on New Literacies (2009)
Handbook of Research on Teacher Education: Enduring Questions in Changing Contexts, 3rd Edition (2008)
Handbook of Research on Teaching, 4th Edition (2001)
SAGE Handbook for Research in Education: Engaging Ideas and Enriching Inquiry (2006)
SAGE Handbook for Research in Education: Pursuing Ideas as the Keystone of Exemplary Inquiry, 2nd Edition (2011)
E-Resources
Blackwell Reference Online – Provides full-text access to reference works in the social sciences and humanities; see research handbooks and companions in Business and Management, Law, Politics, Psychology, and other subject areas. Notable titles include The Blackwell Handbook of Mentoring and The SMS Handbook of Organizational Capabilities, among others.
Handbook of Research on Learning and Instruction – This 2011 compendium is divided into two sections (Learning and Instruction): “The learning section consists of chapters on how people learn in reading, writing, mathematics, science, history, second languages, and physical education, as well as learning to think critically, learning to self-monitor, and learning with motivation. The instruction section consists of chapters on effective instructional methods – feedback, examples, self-explanation, peer interaction, cooperative learning, inquiry, discussion, tutoring, visualizations, and computer simulations. Each chapter reviews empirical research in a specific domain.”
International Handbook of School Effectiveness Research – The focus of this 2007 work is “a review of the development, implementation and practice of the disciplines of school effectiveness and school improvement.” Divided into seven key sections, focusing on: the history of the school effectiveness and improvement movement over the past 25 years; changes in Accountability and Standards emerging from school effectiveness and improvement research; leadership and school effectiveness and improvement; changes in teacher education and curriculum development based on school effectiveness and improvement research; diverse populations and their impact on school effectiveness and improvement; funding education and its impact on school effectiveness and improvement; and best practice case studies of school effectiveness and improvement.
SAGE Handbook of Educational Action Research – This 2009 work is comprised of 41 chapters by scholars in the field and is divided into four sections: (1) Action research methodology: diversity of rationales and practices; (2) Professional: Knowledge production, staff development, and the status of educators; (3) Personal: Self-awareness, development and identity; and (4) Political: Popular knowledge, difference, and frameworks for change.
Second International Handbook of Educational Change – The updated (2009) handbook “remains connected to the classical concerns of the field, such as educational innovation, reform, and change management, and also offers new insights into educational change that have been brought about by social change and shifting contexts of educational reform.”
21st Century Education: A Reference Handbook – This SAGE handbook “offers 100 chapters written by leading experts in the field that highlight the most important topics, issues, questions, and debates facing educators today.”
For a useful collection of additional research handbooks, search CLIO in All Fields (the default search option) by springer international handbooks of education.
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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, Law and Social Science, 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
Scopus – Abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources with smart tools to track, analyze, and visualize research.
See a video tutorial from Columbia University Libraries at Using Citation Analysis Tools in Scopus.
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 a video tutorial from Columbia University Libraries at Using Citation Analysis Tools in Web of Science.
See also 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.
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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