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Resources at the UC Berkeley Library for STEM Education & Outreach: Find Articles +

How to access books, journals/articles, industry information, evidence-based practice resources, government information, community information, and more

ERIC Database: The Education Resources Information Center

Use this article for the ERIC exercise:
Evaluating a science diversity program at UC Berkeley: more questions than answers.
Matsui J, Liu R, Kane CM.
Cell Biol Educ. 2003 Summer;2(2):117-21.

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ERIC has many features to help refine your search:

  • Search by education level (Adult education, Early childhood education, Elementary education, Grade 1, Grade 2, etc.)
  • Search by target audience (Administrators, Teachers, Students, Policymakers, Practitioners, etc.)
  • Search by document type (Article, Classroom guides for teachers, classroom guides for learners, Tests/questionnaires, etc.)
  • Use the ERIC Thesaurus to find subject terms for a more precise search
  • Use "quotation marks" to search for an exact phrase: "systematic review"
  • Use an asterisk* to truncate: educat* finds educate, education, educator, etc.

More ERIC help and information is available here:
guides.lib.berkeley.edu/education/ERIC

Search Strategies

When searching databases for research, if you get too many search results, try adding:

  • Type of person
    • Example: AND latino* OR latina* OR latinx OR "hispanic american" OR "latin american" OR mexican american" OR ... (etc.)
    • Example: AND teen* OR adolescen* OR youth
  • Type of article
    • Example: AND "systematic review"
  • Geography
    • Example: AND usa OR "united states" OR (america* NOT (latin OR central OR south))
  • Or search by title words (instead of keywords)

and so on.

More Databases for Researching STEM Education

Databases with the key icon are UCB Access only. Those without the open lock icon are freely available.

Find the full text via Getting Started with UC-eLinks

UC Berkeley provides access to over 1300 databases on all subjects.

Once at this list, you can limit by:
» subject (Biological Sciences, Engineering, etc.), or by
» type (articles, news, videos, etc.)

Find Books, Reports, etc.@ UCB

Use the UCB/UC Library catalog, UC Library Search, to find books, reports, dissertations, video, articles, and more. The UCB Library alone has over 12 million volumes, plus millions of online items!

UC Library Search:

  • Find books, films, maps, archival materials, dissertations, and more in the UCB Libraries
  • Search using keywords (including author names, titles, subjects, etc.)
  • Limit by date, language, publication format, etc.
  • Limit to items available online
  • See if the book you want is already checked out
  • Save and email search results
  • View what you have checked out and renew online
  • Request items checked out by someone else

Information on using the library, including library cards for non-UCB folks

Find Books, Reports, etc. Online

Internet search engines (eg Google) are good for finding grey literature (government/NGO reports, technical reports, etc.).

Search smartly:
Quotes for phrase searching:
"STEM education"
Site: to specify a particular site or domain:
"STEM education" site:.org (for a domain search)
"STEM education" site:berkeley.edu (for a specific site search)
Boolean search statements (eg, OR):
("STEM education" OR "STEM outreach")

Other sources of grey literature include: