Webinar Alert: Spring PsycINFO Sessions for Librarians

Our spring semester lineup of webinars for librarians kicks off next week. If you’re looking to expand your search skills, or just need a PsycINFO refresher, we hope you’ll join us! We offer two different one-hour sessions, both of which include live search demos.

 

Behind the Scenes of PsycINFO reviews the structure of APA Database records, and covers fields such as Index Terms, Keywords, and Classification Codes.

 

Beyond Subject Searching in PsycINFO includes a review of searching for information on tests and measures, and looks at other ways you can use PsycINFO to do more than just locating articles.

 

Additional Webinars for Students and Faculty

Looking for sessions for students and faculty, or our APA Style CENTRAL Online Introduction? Please visit our main webinars page for schedules and descriptions.

 

View Tutorials Anytime, Anywhere!

We also offer a large library of video tutorials. These can help you – and the students, faculty, and researchers you support – become a PsycINFO expert: https://www.youtube.com/PsycINFO

From the Deck of… ALA Midwinter 2018

Welcome to “From the Deck of . . .” an irregular series in which we highlight search demos and other information from the slide decks we create for our live training sessions. You can view and download these materials from the PsycINFO SlideShare account.

At the recent American Library Association Midwinter conference, APA hosted a Lunch & Learn training session, which covered searchable vocabularies in PsycINFO®.

  • Keywords are searched using natural language, and are good for current research and new concepts.
  • Index Terms (also called Subject Headings) are found in the thesaurus tool, and help the focused researcher quickly find all records about a concept.
  • PsycINFO Classification Codes® describe broad areas of psychology, and are good to pair with a keyword or an index term search.
  • MeSH, or Medical Subject Headings, are assigned by National Library of Medicine, and are good for searching neuroscience and health topics, especially for researchers familiar with PubMed.

Continue reading

In Case You Missed It – Searching By Keyword, Index Term, and More

In January of 2017, we posted about searching APA PsycInfo® by different vocabularies – keywords, index terms, classification codes, and MeSH.

In case you missed it, start the new semester off with a better understanding of which vocabulary will suit your needs.

Keywords (also called Key Concepts or Identifiers) – individual words, key concepts, or brief phrases that describe the document’s content; usually provided by the author or publisher.

Good for researchers who are new to a topic.

Index Terms (also called Subjects or Subject Headings) – are chosen by APA staff from Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms®.

Good for the focused researcher. 

Classification Codes (also called APA PsycInfo Classifications) – a descriptive term plus a corresponding numerical code; like the index terms, there is a pre-existing list, or controlled vocabulary.

Good to pair with keywords or index terms.

MeSH – Medical Subject Headings are a controlled vocabulary maintained by the National Library of Medicine for their PubMed database.

Good for medical or neuroscience topics.

To learn more about any of these search vocabularies, review our post on them from January 2017.

Related Resources:

APA PsycInfo Expert Tip – Searching by Keywords Across Platforms

APA PsycInfo Expert Tip – Classification Codes

Tutorial – Using APA PsycInfo Classification Codes on EBSCOhost

APA training events at ALA Midwinter 2018

Will you be at the ALA Midwinter Meeting & Exhibits in Denver this February? We hope to see you at our Lunch & Learn!

American Psychological Association Lunch & Learn @ ALA Midwinter

Sunday Feb 11, 1-2:30

RSVP link

 

This year’s session will include a look at keywords, index terms, and other searchable vocabularies on PsycINFO across multiple platforms, including a look at the new APA PsycNET interface. We’ll demonstrate APA Style CENTRAL’s Writing center, showing how a student would use it to start a paper, add citations and references, find contextual help, run checks, collaborate, and adjust paper settings.

 

Be sure to RSVP if you plan to attend. Walk-ins are always welcome, but priority will be given to participants who register in advance. Please note that we will be unable to admit family members or others who are traveling with you.

 

If you can’t attend the session, please stop for a demo and updates at Booth 1446.

Tutorial Thursday – Searching PsycINFO’s Tests & Measures Field

It’s Tutorial Thursday! In this series, we explore APA’s library of video tutorials available on the PsycINFO YouTube channel and the APA Style CENTRAL® YouTube channel.

For today’s edition of Tutorial Thursday, we’d like to highlight a video series on our PsycINFO YouTube channel: Searching the Tests & Measures field in PsycINFO

 

This brief (3 – 4 minute) video shows how to:

  • Search and view the Tests & Measures field in PsycINFO records, to see a list of the tests and measures used in a particular study;
  • Follow the DOI to view the PsycTEST record for a test or measure, when available;
  • Use the “[Appended]” notation to locate the test questions in the appendix, methodology, or table of the article’s full-text.

 

A version of this tutorial is available for each PsycINFO platform.

 

Related Resource: PsycINFO Expert Tip: Finding the Tests in PsycINFO

 

Please feel free to link to this tutorial in any location where students, faculty, and researchers will find it!

Do you have a “how-to” question about PsycINFO or PsycTESTS?  Please let us know!