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Educational Resource
Center
Mission/Purpose
| User Profile | Facilities
| Services | Resources
|
Research Guides
Mission/Purpose
Boston College's Educational Resource Center (ERC) is located
in spacious quarters on the ground floor of Campion Hall, the building
in which Boston College's Lynch
School of Education (LSOE) is housed. The ERC serves the
specialized resource needs of the LSOE students and faculty.
In doing so, the ERC aims to further the broader missions of the
LSOE faculty, and the University generally, in the area of teaching,
research, and service. Among its major goals are: a) to provide avenues
for students to learn about books and authors, thus enabling students
to integrate both nonfiction and fiction books in all areas of
the curriculum, and b) to assist students to integrate computers
and other technology in the K-12 classroom. The Lynch School of
Education offers an undergraduate degree as well as masters and
Ph.D. degrees. The undergraduate program offers majors in early
childhood education, elementary education, secondary education,
human development, and a major in elementary and intense special
needs as well as moderate special needs. In the graduate area
Master of Education, Master of Arts in Teaching and Master of Science
in Teaching, Master of Arts, Certificate of Advanced Educational
Specialization, and the Doctor of Philosophy degrees are conferred.
User
Profile
The primary user community of the Educational Resource
Center is the students, faculty and staff of the Lynch School of
Education, as well as the School's alumni and cooperating area teachers.
The library's collections and resources are also used by other members
of the Boston College community. Others, for example, Boston Library Consortium
members, are welcome to preview materials within the ERC but are
not eligible to borrow ERC materials.
Facilities
The ERC has a large state-of-the-art microcomputer area
with twenty fully loaded and networked computers, two multimedia
stations with laser disc players, two scanners, and two networked
color printers. In addition, the ERC has two public workstations connected to the library's online catalog and other databases.
A workroom
is available for students' projects. In this workroom, students
have access to a high speed roll laminator, a dry mount press, and
a transparency maker. Materials such as crayons, markers,
glue, and rulers are available for use. Construction paper and
poster boards can be purchased in the ERC at cost. A sink,
wide counters, and a large table make the production room ideal for
projects.
A video
viewing area with 6 individual carrels with small monitor/receivers
and VCRs allow for single use viewing of the ERC videos. A
larger TV and VCR are available for group viewing.
A 50
seat multimedia classroom with tables, display areas, and a sink
is available for methods courses and other special programs.
A large screen projection system allows for computer, VCR, laser
disc, cable, and satellite projection, as well as Internet access.
There
are 8 tables for group or individual work in the ERC itself for
a total of 32 seats. Also available is a conference table
seating 8 for small meetings or collaborative projects.
Services
Reference
The staff of the ERC are committed to providing exemplary reference
service. As a small library, the ERC offers
personalized service to patrons. The ERC is fortunate to
have a large number of excellent student staff to support the
full-time staff. Most of these students are School of Eduction majors who
know the curriculum, the faculty, and the students who use the
center, and thus feel a real commitment to their jobs in the ERC.
At all times the Reference Desk is staffed with knowledgeable personnel
who answer users' vast range of bibliographic, curricular, hardware,
software, and other questions.
Library
Instruction
The Head of the ERC provides numerous education-related library
and bibliographic instruction classes each semester. The
Catalog Librarian teaches the Children's Literature course in
the Lynch School of Education.
Guest
Speaker Series
The ERC hosts and coordinates the Foundation
for Children’s Books guest speaker series which brings to
campus noted children’s authors, illustrators, and publishers (for
example Patricia Reilly Giff, Marcia Sewall, James E. Ransome,
Jack Gantos, Rosemary Wells, and Tomie dePaola in 1999-2000).
Annual
Book Fair
Each year the ERC organizes a book fair to encourage Lynch School
of Education students to build a quality personal collection of
trade books for their classrooms.
Resources
The Educational Resource Center’s collections include children's
books, both fiction and nonfiction, curriculum and instructional
materials, both print and nonprint, educational and psychological
tests, and educational software aimed primarily for use at the elementary
and secondary school levels. Because of the nature of the subject
area, the ERC's collection is multidisciplinary with materials
covering all areas of the curriculum: mathematics, science, social
studies, art, music, language arts, etc. These materials are unique
to the needs of the Lynch School of Education and do not duplicate
materials found in the O'Neill Library. More scholarly journals
and research-focused materials supporting the Lynch School of Education
program are housed in the O'Neill Library.
General
Collection:
The book collection consists of supporting materials for teaching
in all areas of the curriculum as well as selected methods texts.
The ERC subscribes to over 60 periodicals relating to teaching and
teachers, including children's periodicals such as Cobblestone,
Faces, Dolphin Log, etc.
Children's
Literature:
The ERC collects children's books that are relevant to all areas
of the K-12 curriculum; they include fiction and nonfiction titles.
New books are added regularly to keep the collection current.
A small number of this collection are Braille books.
Manipulatives:
The ERC has instructional manipulatives, the majority of them in
math, science, and early childhood.
Educational
and Psychological Tests:
The educational and psychological tests available in the ERC are
to support the assessment courses taught in the Lynch School of
Education. In addition to the complete tests, the ERC also
has computer scoring disks. The tests are kept in a restricted
area and the tests circulate only to licensed psychologists who
are affiliated with Boston College or to students enrolled in
an assessment course in the Lynch School of Education.
Elementary
and Secondary Textbooks:
The ERC's textbook collection is updated continuously and consists
of K-12 textbooks currently in use in school systems throughout
the country. Included are language arts and reading series,
math, science, and health textbooks, social studies texts, music,
and art textbooks.
Curriculum
Guides:
Since it is extremely difficult to keep an updated collection
of paper curriculum guides, the ERC subscribes to the Kraus Curriculum
Development Library. This provides microfiche access to
current K-12, early childhood education, and adult basic education
curriculum guides from all over North America.
Software:
The software collection, which consists of over 400 current educational
titles, supports both the curriculum of the Teacher Education program
and the needs of students who are teaching in local schools.
Formats include laser discs, CD-ROMs and disks.
Video
and Audio Tapes:
The ERC collects video tapes that have direct relevance to classroom
teaching as well as videos pertaining to the wider K-12 educational
environment. The ERC also has a selection of audio tapes.
Selected Electronic Resources Available to Users of the Educational
Resource Center:
Research
Guides
The following resource guides provide helpful advice to ERC users
in locating material pertaining to children's literature and education:
Children's
Literature, Databases
and Indexes Useful for Educational Research, Education
Statistics, Eric
on WebSpirs, Philosophy
of Education, Education
Rankings.
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