Library Guides: Learning, Design, and Technology: Finding Articles

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Due to recent defunding and staffing cuts at the U.S. Department of Education, significant changes are occurring with ERIC and other Education databases. Penn State librarians are monitoring the evolving situation and recommend that researchers use various search strategies to find desired materials. Please contact us if you want assistance in conducting a thorough search. We're happy to help you!

ProQuest Education Database
ProQuest's largest database for Education journal articles. Provides full-text for many publications. Recommended for most research projects.

ProQuest Education Journals provides access to over 785 journals, more than 615 in full text, including all aspects of education, with coverage since 1991.
ERIC (ProQuest)
Contains materials indexed by the U.S. Department of Education, reflecting recent (2025) changes to ERIC's scope. It continues to be valuable for its thesaurus and for its coverage of non-journal items (grey literature) that aren't included in other tools. Unlike the USDE version (linked below), this ProQuest version links to Penn State's paid journal subscriptions, enabling you to read articles online.

ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) is the major database for education literature, sponsored by the U.S. Department. of Education. The same database content is available on many platforms.
Google Scholar
Google's search engine for scholarly journals. A vital tool for exploring materials outside of the Penn State library system, using algorithms that are different from library databases.

Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web. Once you set your institutional preferences, links to full-text, if available at Penn State, should appear.

To Expand Your Search

LionSearch
An integrated search of books, e-books, research articles, newspaper articles, and other publications. Contains vast materials that are not covered by ERIC or ProQuest Education Database.
EDUCAUSE Library
Focuses on information technology in higher education. In addition to journal articles, it includes blogs, reports, webinars, and other material.

Users must click on login in the upper right hand corner and create a profile account with their psu domain e-mail to gain access.The EDUCAUSE Library is an international repository for information concerning use and management of information technology (IT) in higher education. It aggregates over 24,000 resources submitted by EDUCAUSE, EDUCAUSE Center for Analysis Research (ECAR), EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), Higher Education Information Security Council (HEISC).

Education Research Index
Combines ProQuest's ERIC with ProQuest's Supplemental Education Index (see description below).
Supplemental Education Index
A new database, created by ProQuest, which "actively covers 75% of the journal titles covered by ERIC at its peak with the intention of increasing coverage over time." It is most useful for researchers who need a tool that is similar to ERIC, without ERIC's recent (2025) reductions.

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