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English Language Arts Education (PreK-12): Finding Evidence Based Research

Searching the Catalogs for Books

To find books, search these four catalogs:

BGSU Libraries Catalog

  • Search for books, videos, music scores, CDs, journals, newspapers, and archival and special collections available at the BGSU Libraries.

OhioLINK Library Catalog

  • Search for books, periodicals, electronic resources, and other items in the more than 100 OhioLINK member libraries.

Searching for eBooks

Search these eBook collections, especially if you're away from campus. You may need to authenticate with your BGSU email username and password. 

Locating Materials Flowcharts

These flowcharts explain how to conduct searches that will yield more relevant results and provides possible alternatives when searches fail.

Core Education Databases

Start with these essential databases. These are high-quality, subscription-only databases provided by the University Libraries. If you are using them off-campus, you will be asked for your email username and password. 

Education Full-Text & Education Index Retrospective

  • Index to core English-language journals, books, and yearbooks in education, many of which are full text

Education Research Complete

  • Index to and full text of articles about all fields of education and all educational specialties.

ERIC (Education Research Information Center)

  • ERIC indexes education-related literature, beginning in 1966. It includes citations to research reports, journal articles, and books, many of which link to full text.

Additional Databases

The University Libraries subscribe to more than 300 databases that cover many different disciplines. Because research topics may vary, be sure to browse through the other databases. You can do this by using the A-Z Databases list and select the pull-down to browse by All Subjects.. Here is a list of additional databases that are interdisciplinary:

Academic Search Complete

  • A multi-disciplinary full-text database that includes scholarly journal articles on all subjects as well as magazines, books and book chapters, reports, conference proceedings, and more.

JSTOR

  • Over a thousand full-text scholarly journals and books covering all subjects in the humanities, sciences and social sciences. History, economics, art, literature, and mathematics are particularly strong. All journal titles are archived back to the first issue, many dating from the early 1800s.

OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center

  • More than 7,200 full-text scholarly journals in all subject areas purchased by Ohio academic libraries.

PsychInfo

  • The premier index to journal articles and other scholarly publications in the field of psychology.

Search Tips

  1. Using the right keywords in a search tool can be tricky when you are new to a topic. Enter your search terms and start reading the abstracts or summaries to look for other ways to express your concept. It's also a good idea to talk to your professor to see which search terms they suggest. 
  2. You may bump into publisher websites that ask you to pay for articles. Don't do this! Chances are we either have the article full text or you can request it through Interlibrary Loan which is a service we provide to you for free! The quickest way to find out if we have the full-text of an article is to put the article title into Summon. Don't forget to use quotation marks around the title of the article.
  3. Not finding what you need? We can give you suggestions for which databases to use. Contact your librarian or just Ask Us!