Library resources provider EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) has announced that it is making the government database ERIC available during the government shutdown. ERIC, the Education Resource Information Center, is typically available through the government website (http://eric.ed.gov/) as well as via EBSCO's EBSCOhost research platform. As a result of the shutdown, the government website is unavailable. EBSCO has therefore decided to temporarily open its version of ERIC and make it available at: http://www.ebsco.com/freeERIC.
ERIC provides access to educational literature and resources including access to information from journals included in the Current Index of Journals in Education and Resources in Education Index. It was designed as a national information system to provide access to education literature and resources. According to its website, ERIC is the world's largest and most frequently used education digital library. ERIC provides more than 1.4 million bibliographic records and dates back to 1966.
Because of the shutdown, access to the full text of articles and other materials will not be available but researchers will have access to the full set of A&I records on EBSCOhost. Users going to http://www.ebsco.com/freeERIC will now see ERIC listed among the other free EBSCO databases such as GreenFILE™ and Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts™ (LISTA).
