- ◊ about us
About
The Pickering Educational Resources Library at the School of Education was founded fifty years ago as a collection of resources "…to serve teachers and it grew to serve teachers." (L. Tolman, personal communication, March 21, 1999). It functioned as a curriculum laboratory with a collection of textbooks, curriculum guides, instructional aids, periodicals, and books for children and young adults. The PERL today continues to support the curriculum of the School of Education and to provide information services and research support to faculty and students.
Today the PERL offers a collection of print and electronic resources that includes 20,000 books, 100 periodical titles, 90 videos and 5,000 tests in print and microfiche format. Electronic web-based resources are accessible from library workstations and off campus through the BU network. These resources include an online catalog and access to several other library catalogs, a variety of indexes to the journal literature, and a growing collection of full text journals. Pre-K-12 resources in electronic format are available at PERL workstations and through the PERL homepage.
The library's resources are supported by those of Mugar Memorial Library, Boston University's main library, which maintains an extensive research collection in the social sciences and humanities. Books and periodicals in the field of Education related to research and theory, and higher education materials, are housed at Mugar Library. Searches for these materials can be conducted in the PERL using the BU online catalog.
Our staff is available to help with these resources and with access to resources from collections worldwide.
Visitors are welcome to browse the library's collections and use materials in-house. Access to electronic resources is, for the most part, restricted to members of the Boston University community