The issues: (Please remember that in attempting to distill this 34 page document, quotes are necessarily taken out of context.)

1. Indexing changes
2. Expertise
3. Clearinghouse services lost
4. Reliance on outside vendors
5. Integration with other databases

The Department of Education has issued the first draft of a Statement of Work about ERIC. It would be a major change from the system as it is today. It centralizes ERIC, eliminates the Clearinghouses and makes one office responsible for all aspects of the database. Many people feel that the proposal weakens the indexing, which may affect the quality of the database. There is also a potential loss of expertise as the proposed oversight groups are smaller than the current group of content experts and they will not be as independent or as involved as the current Clearinghouse staffs. Others are concerned about the elimination of the Clearinghouse system and the services it provides particularly in the area of outreach or dissemination. The Clearinghouses maintain an impressive network of customer support including web sites, toll free numbers, and workshops. AskERIC, a personalized response service of the Clearinghouse on Information and Technology is the second most heavily used website at the Department of Education. The proposal also appears to relying on external content providers for full text of some items.

The Statement of Work proposes some enhancements to which people may want to respond. The new system will index items much more quickly, will index journals comprehensively, and will make full text of many items available freely online within the database. It will also provide links to commercial sources of items not available in the database. Markup of items in the database will be improved so that it can be integrated with other information sources. The draft also mandates that the database records be easily understood, and that the search interface be easy to use.

Last update May 11, 2003