Educational Research Library Frankfurt and Frankfurt Teachers Library

The Library for Educational Research at Frankfurt and its associated Teacher Library stocks approximately 220,000 media: it is thus one of the largest specialised pedagogical libraries in the German language area. Its stock is unique to the region; it holds ca. 600 current German and foreign periodicals, statistics and yearbooks and a large archive of older issues.

Stock

The Frankfurt Library of Educational Research orients its stock towards the research areas and tasks covered by the institute. A focus of its acquisition policy lies on media addressing empirical and comparative educational research and educational science. In particular, this pertains to the topics of

• Educational quality and evaluation
• Educational policy and the development of education systems
• Educational economy/financing
• Educational legislation and educational administration
• Intercultural education
• Pedagogical psychology and developmental psychology
• scientific sociological research methods
• Information science, information competence and media pedagogy

The main focus is placed on the pre-school and school area of education in the German-speaking area and in Europe (European Union). Media focusing on international research and developments are collected on principles of selection (best practice).

The profile of the Library is completed by two special areas of collection:

• A collection of newspaper articles with educationally relevant topics, referencing more than 150,000 articles from national and international newspapers – records in the database go back to 1985
• a test library with more than 1,200 tests for schools, giftedness and development until 1995, which is currently ordered and indexed.

The associated Frankfurt Teacher Library (FLB) collects practice-oriented literature intending to support teacher trainees, students, teachers and school managers in implementing new concepts and methods. It demonstrates how research findings can be put into practice. The periodicals cover a broad sphere of subject-didactic, instructional and school-organisation related journals, while the monographs focus on general didactics and instructional practice as well as the area of school organisation.

Using the library

Search is possible via an online catalogue (OPAC), which references bibliographic records acquired later than 1981. Publications acquired before 1981 are continually added. They can currently be searched by the conventional card indexes.

The library stocks can be searched nationally via the co-operative library association Berlin-Brandenburg. They contribute considerably to the  bibliographic databases German Education Index and Information System Media Education.

Users will find a reading room with 20 work stations, two computer workstations providing access to databases, electronic journals and the Internet, a photocopying machine and a CCTV for visually impaired readers. Monographs are on loan for registered users.