The British Education Index continues to serve its original, 50-year old, purpose as an independent subject and author index to the contents of significant education journals published in the UK. Within limitiations imposed by its self-financing status, the BEI also seeks to identify information from an increasingly diverse research environment, particularly addressing texts on the Internet and events, as detailed below. All BEI services are created and maintained by staff whose costs are met by income from royalties and from occasional contracted work, and who use custom-built but potentially widely exploitable information management tools to do their work.
Coverage of documents
At the beginning of 2012 there were 175,000 references to journal articles in the BEI database. The database grows by over 8,000 records per annum.
At the beginning of 2012 there were 6,000 documents in the Education-line collection. All references to Education-liine texts appear in the main BEI subscription database.
At the beginning of 2012 there were 6,750 references in the BEI database to freely accessible (UK) texts on the internet.
Coverage of events
More information about the background and development of BEI services can be found in The British Education Index: its services and its users.