Author: Patti Avellanet

Apply by 3/31 for the APA Librarian Conference Travel Award

Posted on by Patti Avellanet in For Librarians

There’s still time to get your application package together!

Do you work in an academic or health sciences library in the United States? Are you an early- or mid-career librarian? Are you looking for sources of funding for a conference you’d like to attend this spring?

If the answer to all of those questions is yes, please consider applying for an APA Librarian Conference Travel Award! Through March 31, 2018, we are accepting applications for conferences taking place from May to August 2018. This includes – but is not limited to – LOEX 2018, the Medical Library Association Conference 2018, ALA Annual 2018, the ACRL Immersion Program and Teacher Tracks, and the APA Annual Convention.

The award is intended to help defray conference-related expenses for librarians with less than 15 years of experience after receiving their MLS/MLIS. Three cash awards are distributed three times each calendar year, and the application cycle opens and closes on a rolling basis. At this time, we are not limiting the conferences that are eligible for travel award funding. Applicants should identify the conference that best meets their professional needs, and explain how attendance will support their current duties and future goals.

Continue reading →

Webinar Alert: APA Style CENTRAL® Trainings for March & April 2018

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

APA’s training specialists have developed several webinars for librarians, instructors, and students that include a content overview and a live demonstration of features.

Click on any session link below to register (all times are EDT).

APA Style CENTRAL Overview (60 minutes) introduces librarians, faculty, and students to the platform:

Teaching With APA Style CENTRAL (60 minutes) details how faculty, librarians, and other instructors can use APA Style CENTRAL in teaching APA Style:

Writing Papers in APA Style CENTRAL (30 minutes) teaches end users how to create and save papers using APA Style CENTRAL:

For more information, including the full training schedule, visit the APA Style CENTRAL webinars page.

Tutorials on APA Databases Now Grouped in Playlists

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

The Tutorials on APA Databases page has been redesigned for easier use. It contains the same content, but the tutorials are now grouped in playlists by platform (APA PsycNET, EBSCOhost, Ovid, and ProQuest).

This page also contains the YouTube playlist for the Introduction to APA Databases that explains how to use our different databases and what you’ll find inside each one. This information is helpful for new users or anyone that could benefit from a refresher.

If you’re not yet familiar with this extensive library of video tutorials, we invite you to head on over and check it out! On the APA Databases site, look for the “Tutorials on APA Databases” link under the “Training & Technical Support” section in the right navigation pane.

Feel free to link to any of these playlists — or individual videos — in your library websites, LibGuides, course management systems, or other locations where students, faculty, and researchers will find them.

Related Resources:

 

APA Style CENTRAL – Research Lab Book: Develop My Research Idea

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

Today we’d like to highlight one of our APA Style CENTRAL® handouts, “Research Lab Book: Develop My Research Idea” (PDF, 599K). Please feel free to link to this handout where students, faculty, and researchers will find it!

""APA Style CENTRAL’s Research Lab Book is a suite of tools to help you plan and document your research process. Develop My Research Idea guides you through developing a research idea that is neither too broad nor too narrow. Appropriate for use with original research or a literature review, this 5-step approach walks you through a structured framework for brainstorming your interests, identifying a specific topic, developing a research question, elaborating on the details of that question, and clarifying your expectations about the outcome of your research.

When you’re done, you’ll be ready to search for relevant literature and begin considering your study design.

Undergraduates and others who can benefit from a more structured way of formulating a research topic will find this tool helpful.

Faculty and writing instructors can also use these steps individually or in combination as Continue reading →

Tutorial Tuesday: How (and Why) to use the APA Thesaurus on APA PsycNET

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

It’s Tutorial Tuesday! 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: How (and Why) to Use the APA Thesaurus on APA PsycNET®.""

How can you be sure you are finding the best results for your search?

By using the best search terms! The APA Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms (“APA Thesaurus”) contains the controlled vocabulary that APA uses to describe and categorize all content indexed in PsycINFO. This resource is regularly updated to include new and changing terminology for topics in the behavioral sciences, and you can put it to work for you!

Using the APA Thesaurus helps you eliminate “noise” from your search and retrieve the most relevant results by revealing the best search terms for your topic. The APA Thesaurus is a valuable tool for students new to research or any researcher who is new to a topic area and may not yet know the best terminology for searching.

This brief video (2:40 minutes) demonstrates the benefits of using the APA Thesaurus when searching databases on the APA PsycNET platform, and includes:

  • Examples of recent terminology updates to the APA Thesaurus;
  • How to access the APA Thesaurus when crafting a search;
  • Using the APA Thesaurus to find related terms for narrowing or expanding your search;
  • Discovering index terms for broader concepts that encompass your research topic and make searching more efficient; and
  • Uncovering additional search terms you may not have considered.

This tutorial is a great resource to link from a LibGuide or course module for any class working with APA Databases on APA PsycNET, 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 with the link to this new version.

Related Resources: