Return-Path: <nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id h464DZU08627; Tue, 6 May 2003 00:13:35 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 6 May 2003 00:13:35 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <p05100310badc5619dfdb@[128.148.147.35]> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: Janet Isserlis <Janet_Isserlis@brown.edu> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-ESL:8923] Re: ESL writing, composition [high X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Status: O Content-Length: 7776 Lines: 158 Dear all the recent posting of ERIC documents makes the following all the more important. Apologies to those for whom this is a cross-posting. Janet Isserlis Dear all The following outlines an effort to preserve the ERIC clearinghouses -- a resource for many of us in adult ed - and for others in K-12 and higher ed. Please consider acting on this request for assistance, and/or check the websites at the bottom of the page to learn more about the issue. As well, attached is a letter I've sent , if you'd like to adapt it to your own context. thank you best, Janet To: AUTIP-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU To the education and library communities, The Draft Statement of Work detailing proposed changes to the ERIC system has been out since April 10th. (http://www.eps.gov/spg/ED/OCFO/CPO/Reference-Number-ERIC2003/listing.html) I have had time to read it carefully and discuss it with knowledgeable colleagues, including some of the folks at the ERIC Clearinghouses. I think it's time for me to synthesize what I think I know and make recommendations. This letter is necessarily long; please bear with me. I'll begin by saying I hope you all will send multiple letters about this issue. You could write a formal reply to the Statement of Work to Jeff Halstead, and then copy the reply to your Congressional representatives, perhaps adding a note about your concern that this proposal is so radical. Even if you are not from Massachusetts or Maryland I hope you will also copy Senators Kennedy and Mikulski, who are reportedly monitoring the response. Secretary of Education Rod Paige would be another good candidate. (All contact information is available at http://www.lib.msu.edu/corby/education/eric/clearinghouse.htm ) Do this individually and in groups as Departments, Colleges and consortia. Every effort is needed. You are welcome to freely crib from this and any other material I have written on the subject. ( http://www.lib.msu.edu/corby/education/eric/openletters.htm ) There is also a model letter available. ( http://www.saveeric.org/letter.htm ) The two aspects of the Statement of Work that are most troubling to me are the elimination of the Clearinghouses and the downgrades in the quality of the indexing for the ERIC database. CLEARINGHOUSE ELIMINATION The Clearinghouses were established 35+ years ago at centers of expertise in their various specialties. In the intervening years that expertise has grown exponentially, both with respect to the subjects each Clearinghouse covers and in knowledge of the kinds of information or knowledge access questions that the particular subject generates. The ERIC Clearinghouses are the most widely utilized education information resource currently provided by the Department of Education. They respond to over 150,000 emails and phone calls annually from users seeking education related information. AskERIC was a revolutionary service when it was first developed. Many doubted the feasibility of the concept. Any user could write or call and get a personalized bibliography to answer any education related question. Now many libraries provide similar services and most folks in education have used AskERIC on more than one occasion. The Clearinghouses also produce web pages, specialized databases like the Test Locator, and publications on current research, programs and practices. To replace these services the Department of Education proposes to centralize indexing and user response. The new ERIC will rely on three people from each Clearinghouse subject area who will meet once to help decide what journals and what sources of papers to index for the database. Beyond that one meeting the advisors will be expected to offer suggestions and monitor needs electronically. Expertise in the wider scope of each subject area will be lost, as will the exemplary user assistance to which the contact statistics clearly attest. The Department has begun work on a centralized clearinghouse, the What Works Clearinghouse that will be a dissemination center for information about educational research. What Works will evaluate completed research on seven or eight topics each year and make these completed "Evidence Reports" available to the public on the Web. The government's decision to emphasize evaluation of practice information for teachers and administrators should not come at the cost of their most successful outreach program. The idea, implicit but not clearly stated in this move, is that the broad dissemination of education information is not helpful. That teachers and administrators are merely confused by the wealth of information, and researchers do not need the analysis and synthesis the Clearinghouses provide. As if to prove this point, in January the Department removed from its web page a link to the preeminent synthesis documents of the ERIC Clearinghouses, the ERIC Digests, despite the fact that use figures showed they were the most heavily used items on the page. INDEXING CHANGES Looking beyond the loss of the Clearinghouses, the Statement of Work proposes changes to the indexing procedures for ERIC that are likely to have a significant negative impact on the quality of the database. The new contractor is directed to use author provided abstracts and indexing as much as possible. They are also required to use automatic indexing. There will be an in-depth review of the Thesaurus. Effective consistent indexing is not a job for novices. Authors will lack sufficient distance from the subject to be able to accurately place their submissions within appropriate subject headings. Inconsistency or decreased specificity in the indexing process will have a detrimental effect on search retrieval making the database an unreliable resource. Perhaps more troubling, the statement of work gives no indication of how extensive the new ERIC database will be. It mandates that all selected journals will be indexed comprehensively. There will be a panel of content experts to decide which journals are selected. Currently the database indexes about 400 journals comprehensively, but it covers more than a 1,000 by selecting only the education related articles from a wide range of scholarly journals. The new ERIC may not be able to reach so broadly, and in so limiting itself will also limit its utility. Journals are not the only area where content will be limited. The panel of experts will also be asked to decide upon approved sources of non-journal materials. This limited list of possible sources may make it possible for the contractor to construct the database without the expertise currently employed, but the product cannot avoid being significantly weakened. Advocates of this new ERIC have repeatedly used the medical model. They point to PubMed as a successful example of government outreach that serves researchers, practitioners, and the general public with health information. PubMed also includes specific professional indexing of a huge number of information sources and clear divisions of content areas for its different constituencies. These are the factors that make it a success. The Department of Education cannot hope to produce an exemplary product without high quality data. DEADLINES We have until May 9th to respond. Please help in any way you can. Contact me for further information as the need arises. _______________________________________________________ Greta Vollmer, Asst. Professor Sonoma State University Dept. of English 1801 E. Cotati Ave. Phone: (707) 664-2504 Rohnert Park, CA 94928-3609 Fax: (707) 664-4400 greta.vollmer@sonoma.edu also see: http://www.lib.msu.corby/education/doe.htm http://www.saveeric.org/ http://www.eps.gov/spg/ED/ OCFO/CPO/Reference-Number-ERIC2003/listing.html
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