Tag: APA PsycInfo

APA PsycNET® Help Files Update

Posted on by Patti Avellanet in For Faculty, For Individual Subscribers, For Librarians, For Students

We are pleased to announce that a revised version of APA PsycNET® Help files is now available to support the July 2017 platform update. Help files were updated to reflect the new user-interface changes related to responsive design, content discovery, and search tools.

PsycNET Help is available at top-right of the screen, next to the Login link:

Help link shown to right of Login link

The APA PsycNET Help module includes detailed information about:

  • Getting Started with APA PsycNET, including database descriptions
  • Basic and Advanced Search, including fields, filters, and display options
  • Cited References searching
  • Search results, including searching, managing, filtering, and finding full text
  • Managing Searches, including email alerts, RSS feeds, and permalinks
  • Recent searches, My PsycNET, and MyList
  • Browse function for each database
  • APA Thesaurus, including why & how to incorporate it into your search
  • Additional search options, including Lookup tools, Boolean operators, truncation, and more.

Related Resources:

Tutorial Thursday: Using the Author Affiliation Field in PsycINFO on EBSCOhost

Posted on by Patti Avellanet in For Faculty, For Individual Subscribers, For Librarians, For Students

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. Please feel free to link to or embed our videos in your library websites or LibGuides, course management systems, or other locations where students, faculty, and researchers will find them.

We recently updated one of our tutorials: Using the Author Affiliation Field in PsycINFO on EBSCOhost.

Video thumbnail

Do you want to discover what institutions are conducting research relevant to a specific topic, or track down a corresponding author’s contact information?

The Author Affiliation field in PsycINFO provides information about authors’ affiliations at the time of publication. This can be helpful to psychology students and practitioners who want to locate an author, see the kind of research conducted at an institution, or are considering where to apply to graduate school based on topics of interest.

This three-minute video demonstrates how to use the PsycINFO® Author Affiliation Field when searching PsycINFO on the EBSCOhost platform, and includes:

  • Description and search examples for the PsycINFO Author Affiliation field;
  • Using the Source, Authors, and Address fields to help obtain the contact information for a corresponding author; and
  • How to search for articles written by authors affiliated with a particular institution.

This tutorial is a great resource to link from a LibGuide or course module for any class working with APA Databases on EBSCOhost, and can be helpful in answering email or chat reference questions.

The previous version of this tutorial will remain available, but if you have embedded or linked to it anywhere, we encourage you to update your materials to link to this new version.

Related Resources:

Webinar Alert: Fall PsycINFO Sessions for Librarians

Posted on by Marta Soto in For Librarians

Our fall semester lineup of webinars for librarians kicks off on September 19. 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 – In this session, we review the structure of APA Database records, covering the elements of the bibliographic citation, controlled vocabulary and indexing. We also go over value-added fields, such as classification codes and tests and measures. Sample searches demonstrate these fields, as well as the online thesaurus and keyword searching.

Beyond Subject Searching in PsycINFO – This session builds on Behind the Scenes of PsycINFO, and covers a few ways you can use PsycINFO for doing more than just locating articles. Among other things, it includes a review of searching for information on tests and measures, and how to identify the types of research being done at a particular institution. (Taking our Behind the Scenes of PsycINFO webinar first is not required, but this session does assume that you are familiar with the platform you use to access PsycINFO and with the basics of searching the database.)

Sessions run through early December.

 

Related Training Resources:

What’s New with APA PsycNET

Posted on by Marta Soto in For Faculty, For Individual Subscribers, For Librarians, For Students

On July 17, the APA PsycNET platform released a refreshed version that included a new look and feel, as well as a technology upgrade.

We hope this refresh has allowed you to continue your research seamlessly.

 

The features that you’re used to on APA PsycNET are still there, including:

  • Your personal My List, My PsycNET, alerts, and saved searches;
  • Thesaurus or Term Finder;
  • Cited References search;
  • An unchanged search algorithm;
  • The same records and full-text as before, with regular weekly updates.

 

We’ve also added some new tools to assist you, such as related content, a test lookup tool, and additional browse options.

 

If you would like more information about these new tools, please view our webinar on the APA PsycNET changes.

 

Or view the slides detailing APA PsycNET’s new additions.

Tutorial Thursday: Using PsycINFO Classification Codes on EBSCOhost

Posted on by Patti Avellanet in For Faculty, For Individual Subscribers, For Librarians, For Students

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. Please feel free to link to or embed our videos in your library websites or LibGuides, course management systems, or other locations where students, faculty, and researchers will find them.

We recently updated one of our tutorials: Using Classification Codes in PsycINFO on EBSCOhost.

Screenshot of tutorial title screen for Using Classification Codes in PsycINFO (EBSCOhost)

For a more powerful and precise search, you can include PsycINFO Classification Codes in your query. Searching all fields or the “Keywords” field in a database is an easy way to start your research, but using these numerical codes from the APA Thesaurus will help you retrieve the resources you need more quickly and effectively.

Classification Codes are assigned by APA indexers to categorize documents in the PsycINFO database according to the primary subject matter. They are especially helpful for targeting your results when a search term can mean different things in different contexts, or when you want to search broadly.

This three-minute video demonstrates how to use PsycINFO® Classification Codes when searching PsycINFO (and other APA databases) on the EBSCOhost platform, and includes:

  • Description and examples of PsycINFO Classification Codes;
  • Where to find the complete list of PsycINFO Classification Codes; and
  • How to apply these codes to narrow your search to the most relevant results on the EBSCOhost platform.

This tutorial is a great resource to link from a LibGuide or course module for any class working with APA Databases on EBSCOhost, and can be helpful in answering email or chat reference questions.

The previous version of this tutorial will remain available, but if you have embedded or linked to it anywhere, we encourage you to update your materials to link to this new version.

Related Resources: