Report: “A Treasure Trove of Education Reports and Studies [ERIC] is Under Threat”

From The Hechinger Report by Jill Barshay:

ERIC stands for Education Resources Information Center and it is a curated online public library of 2.1 million educational documents that is funded and managed by the U.S. Education Department. The collection dates back to the 1960s and used to be circulated to libraries through microfiche.

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This critical online library catalog is supposed to continue operating under a five-year contract that runs through 2028. Initially, ERIC was spared from the department’s mass contract cancellations in February. But according to Erin Pollard Young, the sole Education Department employee who managed ERIC until her job was eliminated in March, the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE has since refused to approve disbursement of money that has already been authorized by Congress for the upcoming year.

ERIC is scheduled to run out of money on April 23.  After that date, no new documents can be added.  “The contract, from my understanding, would die,” Pollard Young said in an interview.

“After 60 years of gathering hard to find education literature and sharing it broadly, the website could stop being updated,” Pollard Young posted on LinkedIn. “Yes, the data are backed up in so many places, and the website will likely remain up for a while. But without constant curation and updating, so much information will be lost.”

Learn More, Read the Complete Article (1174 words)

See Also: Journals No Longer Being Indexed By ERIC

Filed under: Data Files, Interviews, Libraries, News, Profiles, Public Libraries, Reports