This document describes the major organizational components of the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) system, the interactions between those components, and the major products and services provided by those components. (WTB)

Rules and guidelines are provided for subject indexing in the ERIC system. The principle of "subject access" is discussed with particular reference to "coordinate indexing," which involves designating subject content by unit terms (or tags) that may be put together or "coordinated" for subsequent retrieval. The nature…

The purpose of this section is to specify the procedure for making changes to the ERIC database after the data involved have been announced in the abstract journals RIE or CIJE. As a matter of general ERIC policy, a document or journal article is not re-announced or re-entered into the database as a new accession for the purpose of accomplishing a…

Subject indexing in ERIC is performed by subject specialists across 16 geographically dispersed ERIC Clearinghouses, each responsible for a different niche or aspect of educational information. This phenomenon, combined with the broadness of the education field and variability of terminology therein, has led to the development at the…

This Glossary contains an alphabetic list of some 291 terms used in the ERIC Processing Manual (EPM) or in connection with the generation of the ERIC database and the work of the ERIC Clearinghouses and other ERIC contractors. Each term is defined as it is used in the ERIC context. Appended to the Glossary is a list of 203 commonly-appearing…

This report describes the development and operations of FORMAT, a Canadian database system designed to achieve comprehensive national bibliographic control of Canadian-produced audiovisual materials. FORMAT's developmental criteria are outlined, including its emphasis on Canadian-produced audiovisual documents, French/English bilingualism,…

This loose-leaf manual provides the detailed rules, guidelines, and examples to be used by the components of the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Network in acquiring and selecting documents and in processing them (i.e., cataloging, indexing, abstracting) for input to the ERIC computer system and subsequent announcement in…

Rules and guidelines are provided for subject indexing in the ERIC system. The principle of "subject access" is discussed with particular reference to "coordinate indexing," which involves designating subject content by unit terms (or tags) that may be put together or "coordinated" for subsequent retrieval. The nature…

This report analyzes file development efforts of the Resource and Referral Service project to determine the feasibility of computerizing a database of information on educational resource organizations. Background information on the project is presented in the introduction. The report describes present policies, identifies factors affecting…

After discussing the nature of timeliness and its importance to the user of information systems, this document examines the factors which affect timeliness in three subsystems of the scientific communication system. The first subsystem moves a document from the existence of new knowledge to the point of entry into an information system; the second…

A generalized file-conversion program suite for the EUDISED (European Documentation and Information System for Education) information network, suitable for running on a wide range of mainframe computers, is suggested and described. Time and expenditures required to implement the system are assessed. Two other possible methods of handling the data…

The computational complexity of a formal process for the construction of term classes for information retrieval is examined. While the process is proven to be difficult computationally, heuristic methods are applied. Experimental results are obtained to illustrate the maximum possible improvement in system performance of retrieval using the formal…

The Retrospective Conversion (RECON) Working Task Force investigated the problems of converting retrospective catalog records to machine readable form. The major conclusions and recommendations of the Task Force cover five areas: the level of machine-readable records, conversion of other machine-readable data bases, a machine-readable National…

The Association of Information Dissemination Centers (ASIDIC) formed the Cooperative Data Management Committee to address the problems of information center operators and data base suppliers. The number of operating centers in the U.S. is limited and their future expansion in numbers and in type of services, will depend on the education of users.…

Describes archives of survey data, which differ from archives of other basic research material in that they came into being as collections of material created only to serve someone's original research needs. These archives do have particular problems but they do provide broad contributions to scholarship and should be encouraged rather than…