EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
Dr.  David Conner

Library Instruction Session
(Lisa Glaubitz)

I.   Library Catalogs:      WebCat             MOBIUS

 You may need a book that our library does not have.  While in  WebCat, you can simply click "Search MOBIUS" to see if another library has it.  Then, with a few more clicks, you can request the item and it will be delivered to our Circulation Desk, usually within 2-3 days (this is quicker than  interlibrary loan). You will be notified by e-mail once it is here.  Simply return it to Circulation as you would a Pickler book.

Example:   You need a book called:  The Psychology of Attention by Elizabeth Styles.  You first try  WebCat

•         Title search  

•         Search MOBIUS

•         Select "Request This Item"

•         Select LANCE

•         Select Truman

II.    Keyword Searching

•         Popular  way of searching in all electronic databases (library catalogs, indexes, web search engines).

•         You can combine terms in many ways to broaden, narrow, or in some way tailor your search to retrieve the most relevant results.

Tips:

--Combine terms with AND to narrow your search, and in most cases, to search several different or distinct concepts:

                        
            sleep deprivation AND performance
            time perception AND elderly
            social perception AND schizophrenia

-- Use OR to broaden your search and in most cases to combine similar or related terms:

               cognitive learning theory OR cognitive psychology
               participant OR subject
               Hawthorne effect OR novelty effect
                
        -- Use truncation to retrieve multiple spellings or variants of words:

                theor*    will retrieve theory, theories, theoretical
                cognit*    will retrieve cognitive, cognition

Keep in mind that in WebCat (and many other databases) your terms will be searched as a phrase:   theory of cognitive dissonance -- only records in which the phrase appears will be retrieved.

          -- Use "nesting"  and truncation to further tailor your search:

           time perception AND (elderly OR aged)
           attachment behavior AND adolescent* AND (female* OR girl*)
            






    After doing a keyword search, you can select "Modify search"  to
    limit to various formats, for example, "Video,"  "Audio," etc.


You can also try searching under Library of Congress Subject Headings.  After finding a few items that seem relevant, look at the subject headings attached, and simply click on one of them.  This will pull you into a "subject browse" where you can see related, broader and narrower headings.

Call number areas:  BF 76.5  >> books on psychological research:
    
The Experimenter's Challenge : Methods and Issues in 
  Psychological Research    BF76.5 .J86 1982
                                                         



III.    Searching for Periodical Articles

        There are several databases that are useful for finding research articles from scholarly or peer-reviewed journals in Experimental Psychology and other psychology and social science areas:

• PsycInfo (Psychological Abstracts)  major index of  psychological research and literature.  You will find citatations and abstracts to articles published in 1400+ journals.  Coverage is from 1887.
• Social Science Abstracts
  
  You can get to these from the library's home page, under "Databases,"   "A-Z list."  Or, if you want to browse all journal databases within a specific area, click on the "Subject List."

A few others you might try:

EBSCOhost covers a number of disciplines and indexes both scholarly and popular periodicals.  It contains many full text articles and you can limit your search to articles from "peer-reviewed" journals.

LexisNexis--full text for newspapers worldwide (backfile is approximately 20 years)

To determine if a journal is peer-reviewed (refereed), you can check Ulrich's  International Periodicals Directory located on the table just behind the reference desk.  Or, if it is a journal we subscribe to, you can go to the "Current  Subscriptions" list and click on Psychology.  Those journals with an asterisk next to them are peer-reviewed.   

IV.    Reference Sources   

         
        Corsini, Raymond J. The Dictionary of Psychology
`                                            BF31 .C72 1999 

        Kazdin, Alan J.,         Encyclopedia of Psychology    
                                            BF31 .E52 2000

         Sratton, Peter.          A Student's Dictionary of Psychology
                                            BF31 .S69 1999 

        Daniel T. Gilbert et al (editors)   The Handbook of Social Psychology
                                                               HM251 .H224 1998

        American Psychological Association   Publication Manual of the American  Psychological Association
                                            BF76.7 .P83 2001 (Reference, 2nd floor 
                                                                                    and Reserve)
                                                                                                            
        Roeckelein, Jon E.        Dictionary of Theories, Laws and Concepts in 
                                                 Psychology
                                                 BF 31 .R625  1998

        Squire, Larry R. (editor in chief)    Encyclopedia of Learning and Memory
                                                  BF 318 .E53  1992



V.    Web Sites

            From library's home page, check "Additional Web Resources," "Web Links by Subject," and then "Psychology" for links to several major web sites related to psychology.