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General Library Info for GSE Students

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The following guide is meant to be an introduction to reference works, both print and online, useful for research in the areas addressed by courses and programs at GSE. There is far more to know about library research at Penn then can be presented in such a guide. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the use of the materials listed below, wish to recommend items for purchase for the library collections, or would like to schedule a research consultation appointment, please contact Patty Lynn, Library Liaison to the Graduate School of Education, at lynn@pobox.upenn.edu.

Franklin, the Penn Library's online catalog, lists books, many journal titles, and other materials contained in campus libraries.

Generally Franklin users start with keyword searches. Keyword searches look for words anywhere in the database record for that book. See User Guide-Keyword Searching for information about keyword searching. Also, when looking at Franklin records of interest, chose the "more like this" or "detailed view" to see the subject headings assigned to these works.

LOLA is the catalog of the Biddle Law Library. You may also access the Library Catalogs of Philadelphia Area Libraries.

If you are unable to obtain a copy of a book or journal article from Penn's collection, there are several ways to request materials from other Libraries. You may use any option, but the Borrowdirect options are faster.

1. BorrowDirect+ Two services that enable searching of combined library catalogs and direct placement of requests for books not available at Penn.
   
   -  BorrowDirect: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Princeton, and Yale. Takes 4-5 business days, loan period c. 3-4 weeks, no renewal.
   -  E-ZBorrow: Over 40 academic and research libraries in Pennsylvania and nearby states, including: Rutgers, Penn State, Temple, and Pittsburgh. Takes 4-5 business days, loan period of c. 3-4 weeks, 1 renewal, will be listed in your Franklin library account.

2. Request a Book form via Interlibrary loan. Loan time can vary from 9-14 days, sometimes sooner, sometimes longer. Start research early.

3. Research Libraries Group Catalog (RLIN).
   The RLIN catalog contains cataloging records for books, periodicals, recordings, scores, archival collections, and other kinds of material held in major research libraries, museums, and archives. RLIN is useful for verifying citations for possible request via inter-library loan.

   WorldCat.

   WorldCat lists records for book, journals, and other types of materials held at hundreds of libraries in the United States. WorldCat is useful for locating materials at other libraries and verifying citations for possible request via inter-library loan.

Once you have identified specific journal articles you need you need to check to see if the Library subscribes to the journal titles containing those articles, whether in paper format or online. To do a thorough search, check 1,2,3 below.

Check

1. PennText Article Finder Use PennText Article finder to see if a journal is available in full-text. Beware that not all products participate in PennText.
2. E-Resource Locator Some titles are entered into the Ejournal list before they are entered into Franklin.

3. Franklin Lists subscriptions and holdings for both paper and online journals subscribed to by the Library.

The following indexes are used to locate journal articles. Some indexes cover additional types of works.

Education

ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center).

Provides indexing to almost eight hundred education and education-related journals, as well as research documents, speeches, and government publications. Focus is strongest on the United States.

Professional Development Collection (PDC)

Specialized index covering education and related fields, as well as library science. Indexes over 800 journals; 500 offered in full text journals. Many higher education journals are indexed here, full-text provided for some.

Education Index.

Indexes over five hundred journals in education comprehensively. A good number of these titles have full-text for recent years. Covers 1983 to the present. The print version of Education Index is located at [Van Pelt Library Reference Stacks: L11 .E384], 1929-.

British Education Index. London: The Library Association, 1961 - .

[Van Pelt Library Stacks: L16 .B758], v.1 (1954/1958)-v.27 (1991).
Subject and author index to over two hundred British journals.

Sociology of Education Abstracts. Liverpool: Sociology of Education Abstracts Service.

[Van Pelt Library Stacks: LC189 .S624], v.1 (1965) - present, latest two years in Reference.
Covers the sociological aspects of education, each issue gives abstracts of English- language books, articles and sections of monographs and yearbooks.

Higher Education Abstracts. Claremont. Calif.: Claremont Graduate School.

[Van Pelt Library Stacks: LB 3605 .C64], v.20 (1984/1985) - present, unbound issues in Van Pelt Reference.
Indexes original and recent research applying to more than one institution, state, or field. Items cited may be either journal articles, conference papers, or published and unpublished monographs.

Research into Higher Education Abstracts. Society for Research into Higher Education. Guilford Society for Research into Higher Education, 1967-.

[Van Pelt Library Stacks: LB2300 .R48], v.2 (1968)-v.20 (1987)

Business

ABI/Inform (Proquest)

Index to journal articles in business and management. Includes popular titles like Fortune and Business Week, as well as more scholarly titles such as Journal of Economic Literature. There are numerous articles related to higher education and management and financial issues.

Business Source Premier

A business periodical index that includes both popular and scholarly business periodical publications. Some articles on higher education and finance are included.

Language and Linguistics

Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA).

Covers world's literature in linguistics, language acquisitions, language teaching.

Language Teaching. Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1982 - .

[Van Pelt Library Stacks: P51 .L35], v.15 (1982) - present, recent issues in Current Periodicals.

A cross-disciplinary work, indexing over 400 journals in the area of teaching modern languages, including English as a second language. Covers linguistics, educational technology, psychology, teaching methods, and experimental teaching.

Policy

PAIS (Public Affairs Information Service).

Covers 1972 to the present.

PAIS covers public affairs and policy issues related to a wide range of topics: agriculture, banking, finance, business, demographics, education, health, environment, public administration, law and legislation, and international relations.

Psychology

PsycINFO

Covers 1887 to the present.

Indexes articles on psychology and related files from 1300 scholarly and professional journals. Book chapters and dissertations are also included.

Sociology

Sociological Abstracts.

Covers 1963 to the present.

Abstracts of the world's serial literature in sociology and related disciplines from Sociological Abstracts and SOPODA.

Multidisciplinary Indexes

Academic Index.

Provides indexing and abstracting for both scholarly and general interest journals; and full text or full image coverage of more than 500 titles.

ISI Citation Indexes.

The ISI Citation Indexes include the Science, Social Science and Arts & Humanities Citation Indexes. The database covers the full run of all three subfiles. Both keyword and citation searching are available. The database covers journals in the sciences, social sciences, and arts & humanities.

Dissertations produced at the University of Pennsylvania are cataloged in Franklin. Dissertations from the Graduate School of Education as assigned two subject headings:

penn dissertations--education

education--penn dissertations

Use either guided keyword or the following format for a regular keyword search (skey means subject keyword):

skey "penn dissertations" and principal?

skey "penn dissertations" and "emergent literac?"

Call numbering makes it easy to browse recent dissertations in education and other fields. A circulating copy of each dissertation is kept in the Library stacks. Individual dissertations are assigned an unique call number and arranged by year of award and then alphabetically by author's last name within that number range.

To indentify dissertations from other schools or to search for Penn Dissertations by advisor, subject, or keyword in the abstract, use:

Dissertations Abstracts International.

Indexing (since 1861) and abstracting (since 1980) for doctoral-level dissertations completed at North American universities. Dissertations from selected European universities are also listed and selected master's theses are included since 1988. Full-text is available in PDF format for the most recent Penn dissertations (since 1997).

To restrict searching to Penn only, use these institutional codes:

University of Pennsylvania	sc(0175)
Univ of PA School of Nursing	sc(0839)

Please send questions and comments to Patty Lynn, Library Liaison to the Graduate School of Education, at lynn@pobox.upenn.edu.