Librarian
Welcome
This guide highlights research resources for students in the summer Clinical Experiences in Reading and Writing summer guided internship.
For any questions or assistance, please contact your librarian, Ash Lierman, at lierman@rowan.edu , or you can book an appointment directly from my calendar. (Don't see a time that works for you? Email me and we can figure something out!)
Find Professional/Scholarly Articles and More
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Education Combined Search (ERIC + Education Source) This link opens in a new windowThis link lets you search simultaneously in both ERIC and Education Source, described below.
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ERIC This link opens in a new windowScholarly articles, magazine articles, reports, and more in education, tending toward a K-12 practitioner focus.Please note: ERIC is maintained by the Institute of Education Sciences. Due to ongoing changes at the federal level in 2025, there are currently many unanswered questions about ERIC's present and future in terms of scope and updating. For literature from before 2025, however, it is still a valuable research resource.
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Education Source This link opens in a new windowJournal articles, books, conference papers, dissertations, and more in education, tending toward a more research and scholarly focus.
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Education Database (1988 - current) This link opens in a new windowNumerous education-related articles in journals, magazines, newspapers and teacher professional publications.
Find Seminal Works by Literacy Theorists
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Scopus This link opens in a new windowScopus is one way to search for seminal works:
- Select Authors above the search box, and search for the author's last and first name.
- Find the correct author in the list and click their name.
- Sort the list of documents by "Cited by (highest)." Older works with the highest citation counts are most likely to be seminal.
- Note that books and some articles may not appear in Scopus!
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Education Combined Search (ERIC + Education Source) This link opens in a new windowAnother way to identify seminal works:
- In Education Combined Search, enter your theorist's last name in the first box, and a theory or concept associated with them in the second box (e.g. gambrell and motivation)
- Before the third box, select NOT from the drop-down, and then after the search box, select AU Author. In the search box, enter the author's last name again. This tells the database to search for articles mentioning the author, but not by them.
- Go through as many of the results as you can and check their citations and bibliographies. Make a note of what works by that author they cite.
- The more frequently a citation recurs across a number of citing articles, the more likely the work cited is to be considered seminal.
One of these methods may work better for a particular theorist, or they may work best in combination.
Organize and Cite Sources
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Refworks This link opens in a new windowRefWorks is a tool that connects directly to most library databases, and will let you save articles that you find, organize them, and automatically generate citations and bibliographies. You will need to create a free personal account to use RefWorks.
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Academic Writer This link opens in a new windowOfficial resource on APA style. Its most useful features are step-by-step template for developing APA style papers, including a template especially for literature reviews, but it also includes APA style tutorials.
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APA Formatting and Style Guide from Purdue OWLThe Purdue OWL's citation guides are widely renowned as quick resources for learning to cite in multiple styles, including APA. If you need examples or answers to quick citation questions, please consult this guide.
Write a Literature Review
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Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate StudentsCreated by the NCSU Libraries, this 10-minute video introduces the basics of what a literature review is and why it matters. Closed-captioned and includes a transcript.
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Literature Review Workbook for EducationA resource created by your librarian as a step-by-step workbook for creating an education literature review. Download, complete digitally or print, and use as much or as little as you like!