EDU 501: Educational Leadership and Societal Change: Collections at Ikeda Library

A graduate program is always special.  It can offer its students perspectives on, and opportunities for, research and learning that are unique because the program itself is unique.  And a program's uniqueness extends to the school's library, which gathers and maintains a wealth of resources that will support the graduate students in both their research and their growth as professionals and scholars.

At Ikeda Library, in addition to the books and eBooks posted and discussed elsewhere in this LibGuide, there are two physical collections uniquely suited to the needs of the educational leadership program: the ERIC Documents Collection and the Founders' Collection. 

This page describes the Founders' Collection and the ERIC Documents Collection, and offers a few ideas for how to use these collections in your research. 

For more information about the other collections available at Ikeda Library, visit: Ikeda Library Collections.

A collection unique to Ikeda Library that offers the Educational Leadership Program students primary documents about the Soka educational paradigm is the Founders' Collection.

Soka University of America was founded by the educational leader Daisaku Ikeda, and copies of his works and those of the other founders of Soka Education (Josei Toda and Tsunesaburo Makiguchi) are housed on the 1st floor of Ikeda Library in the Founders' Collection.  The books are in Japanese, English, and a number of other languages.

Students interested in learning more about Soka education, or interested in incorporating it into their leadership models, will find quite a few useful texts in this collection.  Be sure to also read the LibGuide on Soka Education for more resources, such as the Soka Education Conference Proceedings from 2005 to now.

Books about the founders and about Soka education can also be found in the general Circulation Collection by searching the catalog. The keywords "Toda," "Tsunesaburo," "Makiguchi," and "Ikeda" will bring up texts related to the founders.  The keywords "Soka" and "Soka education" will bring up more general materials on Soka education. The Soka Education LibGuide has a list of books to get you started as well. 

Be sure to use the call numbers to browse for books on similar topics, as discussed in the "Browsing by Subject" tab.

For more help locating materials on educational leadership and Soka education, come to the Circulation Desk or request a personalized research session.

The Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) is a clearinghouse of documents on education.  The coverage is very broad, and includes articles on  research, teaching methodologies and techniques, theories, and more; it also includes types of documents often not otherwise accessible, such as school district reports and classroom guides. 

ERIC documents are physically available in the library, both as microfiche and in bound form.  The ERIC Documents Collection is located on the 1st floor, just above the Thesis Collection for the Soka University of America Graduate School MA Program in Second and Foreign Language Education.  If your research includes foreign language education, you might find the Thesis Collection to be of interest as well.

If your search in the library catalog produces a book with an ED call number, you will find the text in the ERIC Documents Collection.  For example, my research project is about international education, and by searching the catalog using the subject headings, I find this entry:

To find the document, I will go to the 1st floor collection, and check the 100 000 boxes.  The documents are filed in numerical order but are not always consecutive; in this case, I will find the document I want between ED 108 470 and ED 121 067.

To peruse the ERIC documents by title, you can search the Ikeda Library Catalog by the call number.  Choose "Catalog Search Options," on the upper right hand side of the main search box on the library's home page.  From there, choose "Search by Call Number" from the links on the left hand side.  In the search box on the next screen,  type in "ED" and click submit. 

Many ERIC documents are now available in PDF form from the ERIC Institute of Education Sciences website as well.  The search interface at the ERIC site, a .gov resource, includes useful limiters for educational researchers, such as the "Education Level" particular documents are about, and the "Audience" documents are intended for.  The "Administrators" audience documents, for example, will help you find documents specifically written with administrators in mind.