ED AskERIC Service Budget Code:  
AskERIC is an online information service at the Educational Resources Information center (ERIC) available free of charge to teachers, parents, and students. AskERIC provides its users with customized information on a vast array of educational topics, delivered via the Internet and commercial services such as America Online. Using state-of-the-art technology, AskERIC also provides a personal touch through trained specialists available to assist educators and parents in their search for information.

AskERIC has four components: a question answering (Q&A) service, the AskERIC Virtual Library, the National Parent Information Network, and a research and development (R&D) program.

For the Q&A service, information specialists draw on the resources of the Internet and the ERIC system to provide answers-within 48 hours-to any question about education. Users can try the Q&A service by sending a question via e-mail to AskERIC@ericir.syr.edu.

The AskERIC Virtual Library is a collection of education resources that teachers have requested. These materials include lesson plans, print, and video materials (from organizations such as CNN, PBS and the Discovery Channel), research summaries, digests, Infoguides on key educational topics, frequently-asked questions, and discussion groups for practicing educators and librarians. This is immediately available electronically.

The National Parent Information Network (NPIN)-developed in conjunction with the National Urban League, local housing authorities, and PrairieNet-is an online collection of materials to help parents better support their children's educational, physical, and societal development.

AskERIC R&D applies emerging tools and technologies to deliver services and provide on-demand access to a full range of electronic media. Currently, the AskERIC R&D team is working on: expanding the AskERIC Virtual Library to provide image, sound, and video resources; providing free Internet access to the ERIC bibliographic database using friendly, high performance retrieval software; creating a full-text electronic collection of the documents in the ERIC database; and, experimenting with new Internet products to ascertain their value for serving educators.
Budget ($ M)
FY 95 Act 0.75
FY 96 Pres 1.25
FY 96 Est 0.34
FY 97 Rqst 1.00
Program Component Areas
  FY 96 FY 97
HECC    
LSN    
HCS    
HuCS    
ETHR 0.34 1.00
Agency Ties
DARPA  
NSF  
DOE  
NASA  
NIH  
NSA  
NIST  
NOAA  
EPA  
ED  
AHCPR  
VA  
Milestone Changes  
FY 1995 Actual Milestones FY 1996 Estimated Milestones FY 1997 Agency Requested Milestones
Completed ERIC bibliographic database available on Internet with capacity for 200 simultaneous users and state-of-the-art interface.

Full text of the documents indexed in the ERIC database in 1995 available online in image database.

AskERIC became truly nationwide (worldwide?) service. 		Will dramatically expand access to multimedia and hypermedia materials.

AskERIC will harness a nationwide network of information specialists, using two-way interactive telecommunications, to serve the needs of teachers, administrators, parents and students. 		ERIC will continue to fulfill its mission of maintaining, and providing access to, the world's largest electronic bibliographic database of education-related publications and documents through a national system of specialist clearing houses. The ERIC system synthesizes education information and disseminates it in print and electronic formats. The ERIC system provides access to its network of bibliographic information to educators, policy makers, parents and the general public. It provides access to the database clearinghouses via mail, telephone, and electronic routes. It maintains a question and answer service via the Internet.