The U.S. Department of Education will spend $29 million over the next five years to enhance the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) digital library which provides free access to a broad array of education literature. ERIC is the world's largest and most frequently used digital library of education, containing more than 1.3 million bibliographic records indexed from 1966 to the present.
New enhancements include:
- Collaboration with the agency's library to digitize and process archival materials related to the history of the Department, such as early 20th century records from the Commissioner of Education
- Enhanced online submission format allowing Department of Education grantees and contractors to easily submit reports and related published research
- Establishment of a Library Committee, composed of school, academic, and special librarians who will recommend journals and sources, changes to the ERIC Thesaurus, and services and outreach
- Optical Character Recognition (OCR) of 486,000 digitized microfiche documents to ensure universal access
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