ERIC needs friends
Dear Colleagues,
If you find the current ERIC system structure and services to be of
professional value, I ask that you examine the information below and the Action
Alerts attached, and consider how you might respond to the current plan to
close all ERIC clearinghouses and delete all publication, user service, and
outreach activities currently provided by the clearinghouses. Time
is of the essence. Public comment on the draft statement of work will be
accepted until May 9, and then the final Request for Proposals will be drafted.
If this matter is important to you, please consider doing the
following:
a) Distribute one or both of the attached Action Alerts to
colleagues, meeting participants, or professional Listservs at your earliest
opportunity.
b) Consider using the attached letter sample to draft a personal letter or
a letter from associations to your congressional representatives and the
Secretary of Education. Faxes on letterhead are considered most
effective.
Though this is a program funded by the U.S. government, I believe
international voices would also influence decisions. Thanks for
considering it.
Current plans for reorganizing ERIC:
1. Eliminates all 16 ERIC Clearinghouses. The
closing of the Clearinghouses will eliminate the long-lasting partnerships that
ERIC has developed with rich discourse communities of researchers,
practitioners, and parents. Under the proposed new Statement of Work, ERIC
becomes an impersonal, automated database.
2. Eliminates personalized services. Many
ERIC customers need direct contact with content specialists who can help them
obtain information or clarification before searching the database. Others lack
ready access to a computer or the skills required to navigate the database. But
the draft SOW eliminates these personalized services:
a. AskERIC and other
Clearinghouse information services-these services respond to nearly 100,000
questions each year.
b. Digests, books, and other publications.
c.
Clearinghouse Web sites.
d. Networking and outreach activities.
e.
ERIC-sponsored Listservs.
f. Referral services.
3. Reduces coverage of journal
literature. The interdisciplinary nature of the ERIC database would suffer
because the number of journals likely to be covered would be reduced from
approximately 1,100 journals to fewer than 400.
4. Eliminates the ERIC synthesis function.
ERIC Digests and major publications provide information in a format and language
that makes this information more accessible to parents and teachers, for whom
highly technical or scholarly writing is not always appropriate.
5. Restricts consumer access to information.
The draft SOW specifies the development of "approved lists" of journals and
document contributors. This strategy increases the possibility that bias can be
introduced into database selection procedures. The draft SOW also calls for
limiting database inclusion to only those items "directly related" to education.
Education priorities change. If ERIC focuses its collection effort narrowly, or
only on certain priorities, it may miss documents and journal articles that
provide a balanced view of current issues or a longitudinal view of education
trends. Research on information dissemination supports the current practice of
reflecting a broad range of practices and views in the database. The ERIC
database is essentially an archive or library that serves best by including
contributions on a wide variety of topics and points of view.
6. Limits customer access to Web-based services
and information. ERIC Clearinghouse-sponsored Web sites are heavily used.
Collectively, these Web sites received 688 million Web accesses and more than
22.5 million unique visitors in 2002. Clearinghouse Web statistics suggest that
ERIC users come to the Clearinghouse Web sites for many purposes other than
searching the ERIC database. For example, in 2002, ERIC Digests were accessed
more than 3.6 million times on Clearinghouse Web sites. Customers also use other
full-text materials on these Web sites-FAQs, conference calendars, links,
financial and scholarship information, and directories.
Conclusion
If the proposed changes do not reflect your
vision of ERIC, p lease make your
views known by May 9 to:
Secretary of Education Rod Paige
Fax:
202-401-0596 (on letterhead, please)
Email:
[log in to unmask]
Your State's
Senators:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Your Congressional Representative:
http://www.house.gov/writerep/
My apologies for the
long message and multiple attachments, but I felt that all of you in the
scholarly community of science educators would be interested and
concerned. The proposed action will directly affect us all.
Regards,
David
--
Associate Professor, Science Education
Ohio State University
*** Shedd Aquarium scanned this email for malicious content ***
*** IMPORTANT: Do not open attachments from unrecognized senders ***
=========================================================
Important Subscriber Information:
The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes).
If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).