This manual describes the contents, purpose, and use of the Australian Education Index Database (AEII), which is produced by the Library and Information Services Unit of the Australian Council for Educational Research to provide access to Australian generated information both in published and unpublished forms. An overview of AEII is followed by an outline of the AEII record format and two sample records. Detailed guidelines for searching the AEII database using STAIRS software are provided, with specific attention paid to searchable fields within the records. Subject indexing of records in the database using the Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors is then reviewed, and the function of stopwords, i.e., words not stored for searching purposes, and the availability of documents recorded in the database are also briefly discussed. Appended are a list of periodicals scanned regularly for inclusion in the database and a list of AEII stopwords. (JL)