Librarians are specialists in using the library’s resources who stand ready to provide students with information and direction. The librarian serves both as a teacher and as a research assistant; he/she instructs the student in the intricacies of library research and may guide the student to specific source material. In order to make the most of the librarian’s services, however, students should must familiar with information in our library. This page is designed to help you become familiar with the resources that we have available to us at Pelletier Library, especially those resources that might be useful to those taking Psychology and Neuroscience courses.
When Help Is Available
As you look through the material below, you may find that you need some help with using an on-line database. Of course, reference librarians are on duty most of the time that the library is open. If you want an introduction to PsycINFO, FirstSearch, or other electronic databases you need to make an appointment with one of the reference librarians. (This will ensure that they have enough time available to work with you.) But in addition, they are available without appointment for instruction Monday through Thursday from 3:00 to 4:00 pm and from 4:00-5:00 (Monday through Thursday) for instruction on using FirstSearch.
On-Line Catalogue
Several years ago Allegheny went to an electronic, on-line catalogue called ALLECAT. ALLECAT is available from any computer on campusby using a web browser. The system is relatively easy to use but unless you feel comfortable with key-phrases, controlled vocabulary, and Boolian operators, it would be well worth your time to get a refresher course from the references librarians. (See the section “When Help Is Available” for details.)
On-Line Databases
We have access to one of the largest on-line database systems in the world via FirstSearch. There are more than 50 different bibliographic databases that range from Arts & Humanities to Social Sciences. There are 10 databases in the social sciences alone! One of the most useful is “SocSciAbs” as it is called. The Social Science Abstracts database covers more than 400 international, English-language periodicals in the social sciences. One advantage of this database over PsycINFO is that although PsycINFO has a wider coverage, you are more likely to find articles in SocSciAbs that we have in our library. The FirstSearch database is linked on the Pellegram: Psychology page on the library’s web site.
In addition to FirstSeach, the library provides connections to a number of valuable databases. Just click the Pellegrams – Subject Guides to Research Resources option on the library’s home page. Of interest to psychology and neuroscience students are Expanded Academic ASAP which provides full text copies of articles from more than 800 journals (no need to wait for interlibrary loan!); ERIC/AE Test Locator (database of over 900 commerical test publishers; and Journal of Neuroscience, a fully electronic journal.
The Web of Science site provides access to two important databases, Science Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index. In addition to being a great way to locate material on a particular topic, these databases provide a great way to find recent references on a topic once you have located a key source. Let’s say you find a great article published in 1990 on depression. Using the Social Science Citation Index you can locate all the publications since 1990 that have cited the orginal article. Check it out! Link from the Pellegram: Psychology option on the library’s home page.
Bibliographies
A bibliography is a list of sources (books, journal articles, essays) that are relevant to a topic. In most textbooks there are bibliographies at the end of each chapter, or at the end of the book; they show where the author found the information written about, and are referred to in the text of the book by number, by name, or by footnotes. These bibliographies have been compiled by experts in the field. To begin a research project by locating one reference at a time is wasteful when a good bibliography is already available.
Where does one find good bibliographies? Books usually have bibliographies. If you locates a relevant book in ALLECAT, the record will indicate if a bibliography is included, i.e., “Bibliographical footnotes,” “Bibliography: p. 250-260,” “Includes bibliography,” etc. Journal articles are also an excellent course of ready-made bibliographies. Almost all scholarly works in psychology will have bibliographies (reference lists). And still another source for locating bibliographies is “Bibliographical Index,” a published reference volume with a subject index to bibliographies. Taking advantage of published bibliographies allows more time for searching recent literature for new information on the topic.
Handbooks
In addition to the periodical literature, handbooks and manuals can be most useful to the student. These secondary sources are excellent means for reviewing the issues and research in a particular area. However, the student is cautioned that handbooks are quickly dated. Due to publication complexities, handbooks are usually at least a year or two behind the most recent research when they are published. The one exception to this is the Annual Review of Psychology which tends to limit its “time lag” to about six months. Below are a listing of some of the handbooks and manuals available in our library.
Annual Review of Psychology. An excellent source book for an overview of particular fields. The articles indicate the major area of concern and the current directions of research and theory. The topics vary from year to year with major topics being repeated each year to two.
Handbook of Research Methods in Child Development.
Handbook of Social Psychology. There are several series by this name, the most recent edited by Lindzey and Aronson.
Handbook of General Psychology.
Handbook of Parapsychology.
Handbook of Perception. A multiple-volume set containing the latest in perception literature.
Handbook of General Experimental Psychology.
Handbook of Personality Theory and Research.
Handbook of Political Psychology.
Handbook of Practical Psychology.
Handbook of Projective Techniques.
Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change.
Handbook of Adolescent Psychology.
Applied Social Psychology Annual. A summary of the progress in experimental social psychology, published yearly.
Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. A summary of the progress in experimental social psychology, published yearly.
Advances in Clinical Psychology. A summary of the progress in clinical psychology, published yearly.
Mental Measurements Yearbook. This series, published irregularly, contains review of tests and books on all phases of mental measurement.
Tests. A comprehensive reference for assessment in psychology, education, and business.
International Encyclopedia of Psychiatry, Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Neurology.
Dictionary of Psychology. A good source for quick definitions of terms that you are not familiar with.
Human Motivation: A guide to Information Sources. An excellent guide to the literature in motivation, the first of a series each in a separate area of psychology.
This list is not meant to be exhaustive. New materials of this type are being added all the time. Check ALLECAT and the Reference Department.
Annual Review
The Annual Review of Psychology is another important source of information for defining and limiting a paper topic. The first volume appeared in 1950 and, as the title suggests, this series of published yearly. Each volume contains between 15 and 20 review articles that summarize the current status of the field of psychology. And perhaps as important, each article includes hundreds of references to the latest sources for the topic under review.
PsycINFO
PsycINFO is a web-based electronic database that contains coverage of international literature in psychology and related fields. It scans over 1400 journals from over 50 countries. The database is updated weekly.
This database may be used by any student or employee of the college, either from on campus or off. (See the library’s “off campus” page for details on using this material from off campus.
Just click here for details on using PsycINFO.
Social Science Citation Index
This reference material contains citations to the literature not only in psychology but the other social sciences as well. Therefore, it is often more useful than PsycINFO if you are interested in an area that might involve data from sociology or political science as well as psychology. The SSCI includes three different indices: the Citation Index, the Source Index, and the Permuterm Subject Index.
The Citation Index is, in a sense, the opposite of PsycINFO. That is, the Citation Index tells what articles have cited a given article AFTER the first article was published. For example, if you find a critical article in a certain area that was published in 1980 (you may have located this original article via PsycINFO) what you might now want to know is “Who has cited this article since its publication in 1980?” With this information you can track forward in time to make sure that you have located all the most important research on a particular topic.
The Source Index is an index that is arranged by author. If you know that a particular researcher is important in a field, you can quickly locate what he or she has published in a given year. (PsycINFO also permits author searches but it is limited to authors who publish in the journals they abstract.)
The Permuterm Subject Index, the third of the sections in the Social Citation Index, is arranged by subject. Unlike the PsycINFO, its indexing scheme involves taking one or two keywords from the title of each article that is listed.
In addition to these three major sections, the Index also contains an “Organizational” section. If a particular organization, a hospital or research laboratory, for example, is important in an area of research, all the works published by that organization will be grouped together under the name of the organization in this section of the SSCI.
All in all, the SSCI is a most powerful research tool. It may require a bit of time to learn how to use, but it can be most helpful in locating research materials. (There is also a Science Citation Index covering the natural and biological sciences. Material in some areas of psychology such as physiological psychology may be found in this index rather than the Social Science Citation Index.)
Government Documents
A good deal of research in the United States is done in government laboratories or by government departments. Much of this research is not published in traditional journals, but in monographs or other non-traditional sources. There are even whole journals that are published by the government. Schizophrenia Bulletin is but one example that might prove useful to psychologists. There are two ways to locate information that has been published by the government. Material such as monographs or pamphlets are indexed in the “Monthly Catalog of US Government Publications.” It is organized both by author and keyword. Periodical listings are indexed in “Index to US Government Periodicals.” Both of these publications are available in our library. In addition, many of the documents that you may locate using these tools are available from our library.
The library is gradually making all of this material available via ALLECAT but you still need to check with the reference librarians to make sure that you have done a thorough search on your particular topic.
Other Abstracts
PsycINFO is not the only useful source of information on psychological topics. The list below is meant to suggest possible sources of information, it is not meant to be exhaustive.
1. Social Science Index – covers a subset of the core journals in all the social sciences. Items listed are likely to be found in our library.Available electronically through FirstSearch (see section on On-Line Databases.) 2. Education Abstracts – not only useful for items directly related to educational topics but to child development in general. (Also available on FirstSearch.)
3. Index Medicus – index of medically related topics, often includes references to psychiatric literature not covered in PsycINFO.
4. ERIC – psychological and educationally related topics with items not published in traditional journals. A good source of measurement instruments. It is available on CD-ROM..
5. Sociology Abstracts – guide to the sociology literature. (Available via FirstSearch.)
6. Biological Abstracts – sometimes includes material on physiological topics not included in PsycINFO.