Directed to the needs of teachers, this article explains the who, what, where, and why of the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) system for providing the results of research and current topics in education to practitioners. Included is basic information on Resources in Education (RIE) and Current Index to Journals in Education (CIJE), the ERIC indexing and abstracting publications; the Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors; the ERIC collection of original documents reproduced on microfiche; and computer facilities for online searching. Estimates of annual costs to subscribers are included, as well as directions for submitting reports, speeches, and other papers to the ERIC system and a list of nine free publications describing the system; e.g., how to start an ERIC collection, bibliographies of publications about ERIC, directories of collections and services, and listings of information analysis products. (RAA)