"More about the BEI" continues to provide information about the content and coverage of the BEI database and its associated information services, linking to further information where appropriate.
Availability provides basic information about getting access to the full BEI database, linking to further information and providers' sites where appropriate.
Education-line replaces the free collections that were searchable through this site prior to March 2012. Education-line represents the collection of documents submitted directly to the BEI by their authors. Any "new" Education-line content typically results from annual conferences of the British Educational Research Association (BERA): BERA Council recommends presenters at those conferences to submit their papers for inclusion in Education-line.
The reduction in free topical content available from this site is reluctant. It is, in part, an attempt to curtail increasingly widespread inappropriate use of BEI records and in part to define the full subscription-based service provided by Proquest Dialog as the version of BEI information that searchers should use. BEI's persistent attempts to secure funding to support the free availability of all its information have been unsuccessful and the self-financing operation remains ever more dependent on income from its core database of records. All of the records previously and currently freely available through this site are in that subscription-based service.
Note that some free collections are also linked from the "Partnerships" area of the site. Typically, these are collections resulting from paid partnership work where the contractor paid BEI to create those collections, and to manage their accessibility. Despite no ongoing funding for these, BEI elects to make them available as long as possible. Amongst those are: the BERA conference archive; the BEI's collection of publications from the Teaching and Learning Research Programme; and a widening participation bibliography.
BEI does have the capabiliity to deliver subject- or project-specific feeds of its references to other websites: see the NCETM Research Gateway by way of example.
Blogs replace the old news pages. The BEI will establish two blogs in 2012: one, "British Education Index", will present occasional service-specific content, the other, "BEI, information services and turbulent times", will present a managed forum for discussion about the role and future of information services like the BEI.