Developing and Managing the Brown University Library Collections
Collection Policies by Subject:  Education

• Library Liaisons:
  Michael_Jackson@brown.edu
• Departmental Library Representative (DLR): 
  Luther_Spoehr@brown.edu
  
  Description of the Academic Program | Education Departmental Home Page
  The Education Department focuses its scholarly and teaching efforts on the study of human learning and development, the history of education, teaching, school reform, and education policy. The concentration in Education Studies is designed for students seeking a broad liberal arts background in the field of education. Concentrators organize a sequence of courses to develop critical and creative skills for addressing educational issues. All concentrators may participate in Department colloquia in which they introduce their research and engage in discussion with fellow concentrators and faculty. This is required of Honors candidates.

  In addition to the concentration in Education Studies, the Education Department offers certification programs in teacher education at the elementary and secondary levels. The Undergraduate Teacher Education Program prepares undergraduates for teacher certification in history/social studies, biology, or English. The department also offers a graduate level Master of Arts in Teaching program in both elementary and secondary teacher certification.

  The current faculty in the Education Department includes scholars in the history of education, public policy and economics, psychology and human development, teacher education, and the social and philosophical foundations of education. Affiliated faculty from the A. Alfred Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions, the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, and the Education Alliance represent the fields of public policy and other subspecialties within education such as school reform and bilingual education. Faculty members in the Education Department are actively engaged in research and teaching.

  The Education Department offers a wide range of courses designed for students seeking an understanding of the many facets of education from multi-disciplinary perspectives. The concentration in Education Studies prepares students for graduate study in education, the social sciences, and other related fields, as well as for professional careers.

  Database of Honors, Masters, and Ph.D Theses

• Overview of the Collection
  The library collections for Education include approximately 25,000 titles and over 130 currently received serials. These sources are mostly available at the Rockefeller Library, though a few titles in psychology and learning theory may be located at Scie nces Library. Because the education department also emphasizes aspects of psychology, human development, public policy, history and economics, the education curriculum benefits from interdisciplinary resources collected by the Library in these other fiel ds.

  The library is also committed to purchasing and subscribing to electronic databases and materials in Education, both indexing/abstracting tools and full-text sources. The ERIC database is available for searching. ERIC, the U.S. Department of Education Ed ucational Resource Information Center database, contains citations and abstracts from over 980 educational and education-related journals, as well as full text of more than 2,200 digests. The library offers a full-subscription to the research reports (ED) microfiche from ERIC since 1990, with a limited number of ED microfiche collected prior to that date. Other interdisciplinary databases which the library subscribes, and which offer material relevant to the Education curriculum, to includes EconLit, PsycInfo, Academic Premier, Sociological Abstracts, Social Sciences Abstracts, Social Sciences Citation Index, and others.

  Over 4,000 electronic full-text journals in the social sciences, humanities and sciences can be accessed by members of the Brown community. Many of these titles are relevant to researchers in the field of Education.

  Brown University Libraries offers full interlibrary loan and document delivery services, which allows students and faculty in the Education department access to materials not found at Brown. The Library's participation in the Boston Library Consortium (BLC) Virtual Catalog Project also gives members of the Brown community the ability to directly checkout books themselves from key libraries within the BLC.

  See Library support statement for Graduate Program Review for Education

  See Link to Brown University Resource Guide for Education.

• General Collecting Guidelines
  In the field of Education, materials about the history of education (especially U.S. education), primary and secondary school education, higher education, cross-cultural dimensions of education, the theory and practice of education, forms and social aspects of education and education of special classes of persons (gender, race, ethnicity) are priorities for acquisition. Other subjects for acquisition include education and public policy, school reform and human development. Education materials are a cquired at the Study, Basic and Minimum levels. Study level is defined as a collection which is adequate to support undergraduate or graduate course work, or sustained independent study; that is, which is adequate to maintain knowledge of a subject requir ed for limited or generalized purposes, of less than research intensity. It includes a wide range of basic monographs, complete collections of the works of more important writers, selections from the works of secondary writers, a selection of representati ve journals, and important reference tools and fundamental bibliographic apparatus pertaining to the subject. Basic level is a highly selective collection which serves to introduce and define the subject and to indicate the varieties of information avail able elsewhere. It includes major dictionaries and encyclopedias, selected editions of important works, historical surveys, important bibliographies, and a few major periodicals in the field. Minimum level is defined as a subject area which is out of the scope of the library's collections, and in which few selections are made beyond the very basic reference tools.

• Specific Collecting Guidelines
  • Language: Only English language materials will be acquired.
  • Chronological Span: : 19th Century, 20th Century and 21st Century primarily. For earlier materials about the history of education, acquisitions will be selective.
  • Imprint Date: Current
  • Geographical Range: Primarily from the United States, with some selective cross-cultural acquisitions.
  • Types of Material Included: Books, monographs, journals, microforms, internet resources, audio-visual, digitized text, electronic databases, government documents, proceedings, data sets; Excluded: Textbooks and curriculum guides

• Special Collections
  University Archives holds materials on the history of education at Brown University.  Student life may be glimpsed through student diaries from the 1820's through the 1920's, and also through letters written by 19th century students to parents and friends. Among the narrative diaries with their accounts of living accommodations, classes, faculty members, and social activities, are several account books kept by students which record their every expenditure during their college careers. Scrapbooks kept by students are a source of photographs, programs, announcements, and other ephemera, which, except for the efforts of the scrapbook compilers, would not have survived. The development of the Brown curriculum can be traced through holdings of student and faculty lecture notes, course announcements, essays and theses, programs of student speaking exhibitions and commencements, and copies of old examinations. 

• Breakdown of Subjects and Collecting Levels

• New Titles Cataloged

• Related Collections and Other Resources
  Affiliated Brown faculty from the A. Alfred Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions, the Annenberg Institute for School Reform and the Education Alliance teach and participate in activities of the Education Department. As part of the Education Alliance, the Northeast and Islands Regional Educational Laboratory at Brown University is based at Brown University. It is one of ten Regional Educational Laboratories sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, serving New York, New England, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. The Lab provides publications, information, referrals and assistance to the educational community. The Lab maintains seve ral databases, including a Calendar of Events, World Wide Web Education resources, and listings of grant and funding opportunities.

• Selected List of Key Internet Resources  

  The Educator's Reference Desk
  http://www.eduref.org/

  National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)  
  http://nces.ed.gov

  Virtual Library: Education  
  http://vlib.org/Education

  Web Links for Research in Education from the Monroe C. Gutman Library
  http://www.gse.harvard.edu/library/educator_resources.html