New Web Site Debuts at www.eric.ed.gov

On September 3, 2006, ERIC released a new streamlined and restructured
Web site. With a more powerful search engine, faster-loading pages,
and an updated home page design including up-front links to ERIC
features and information, the new site reflects ERIC-user feedback as
well as technology changes.

The list of journals indexed in ERIC has been reformatted and now shows
years of coverage and the total number of records in ERIC. The About
ERIC page and some Help text has been rewritten for improved
readability. Other areas will be similarly improved in the coming
months. The addition of a dynamic "In the Spotlight" area on the home
page will offer a changing assortment of ERIC news, user-assistance
information, and additional features.


New Search Engine is Capstone of Redesigned Site

Searching the ERIC collection is now faster and easier than ever,
thanks to the updated site design and new search technology. The
cross-platform search engine offers the user community the following
improvements to enhance their ERIC experience:

? Significantly faster searches and document retrieval
? Search terms highlighted in each results-record
? New relevance-weighting standards to improve the quality of the
search-results display
? Addition of three options for sorting search results - author,
source, and publication date
? Removal of the stemming feature means that quotes are no longer
needed for exact matching of individual words or acronyms. The
asterisk (*) wildcard provides stemming-like functionality (sometimes
referred to as truncation), if needed. To use the wildcard feature,
specify a minimum of three letters (e.g., laugh* to retrieve laugh,
laughed, laughing, laughter)
? Enhanced author searches permitting inclusion of first or middle
initials (e.g., "Doe, C. John" or "Doe, John C.")

Underpinning ERIC's "new face" is the same core commitment to
dissemination of education research and information. ERIC welcomes
your input and invites you to contact us at ericfeedback@csc.com.

ERIC Content Continues to Grow

Through August 2006, more than 37,000 bibliographic records from 2004
to 2006 were added to the ERIC database, including nearly 9,000 free
full-text documents from the U.S. Department of Education, state
education agencies, professional organizations, and other nonprofits
with grey literature. More than 850 recent journal articles (dated
2004 to 2006) are now available at no cost in full-text format. ERIC
has comprehensively indexed articles from more than 500 journals, and
added documents from nearly 340 organizations producing non-journal
literature.

Did You Know.

ERIC Update reaches users in every state of the U.S., the District of
Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, and the Northern
Marianas; every Canadian province; Mexico, and 32 other countries.

During August, ERIC users wrote from across the U.S., as well as
Austria, Canada, England, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Kuwait,
Mexico, Poland, Russia, Singapore, Switzerland, Taiwan, and more. We
look forward to hearing from you.