Screenshot from tutorial How (and Why) to Search the APA Thesaurus in PsycINFO

Tutorial Thursday: Top Tutorials of 2015

It’s Tutorial Thursday! In this series, we explore APA’s extensive library of video tutorials, available on YouTube. Please feel free to link or embed videos or playlists in library websites or LibGuides, course management systems, or other locations where students, faculty, and researchers will find them.

Our video tutorials are a popular resource for people trying to quickly learn how to search APA Databases. But they’re also a rich source of material for librarians and instructors who are teaching students how to efficiently search PsycINFO® and other databases.

For many of our tutorials, we create a version for each of the major vendor platforms: APA PsycNET®, EBSCOhost, Ovid, and ProQuest. When looking at the most-viewed tutorials for each platform in 2015, we noticed that three tutorials appeared on each list. Continue reading

Keyboard with rainbow colors reflecting off of it

Webinar Alert: Sessions for Students & Faculty

Our first series of webinars for students and faculty in 2016 is starting on March 23, 2016. Help us spread the word to faculty, students, and anyone who teaches research methods.

APA provides free training webinars tailored for PsycINFO searchers at all levels of proficiency. We feature three 30-minute sessions: Basic Search, Advanced Search, and Results Management. The sessions may be taken separately, but we encourage interested students to take all three and offer the sessions on consecutive days. These webinars are an ideal way for students to get a refresher on PsycINFO if they have had training earlier in the semester.

Descriptions are provided below. Visit our website to register today for these no-cost sessions.

Research Methods instructors and other faculty: If you would like your students to attend for extra credit, we offer certificates of completion for each session.

Continue reading

The PsycTHERAPY Teaching Guide

PsycTHERAPY® is APA’s database of streaming psychotherapy videos, allowing users to observe psychotherapy techniques as they are put into practice by master practitioners. The videos cover a variety of presenting issues and therapy topics, such as anxiety and self-perception, and include an assortment of well-known therapists working with individuals, couples, and families. The database enables graduate students, educators, and practitioners to see the therapeutic approaches and techniques they’ve read about come to life. Currently, PsycTHERAPY contains nearly 400 videos, with an update scheduled for April that will bring the total number available to 430.

Cover of the The PsycTHERAPY Teaching GuideOver the course of 2015, we talked to educators about how they are making use of PsycTHERAPY. In doing so, we encountered faculty who were using the database in ways we never could have imagined. The PsycTHERAPY Teaching Guide, released in the fall, is the result of conversations with these faculty. The book features a series of exercises, including step-by-step instructions, for using PsycTHERAPY with students, in clinical supervision settings, psychotherapy researcher training, and more. Continue reading

From the Deck of . . . the ALA Midwinter 2016 Lunch & Learn

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 our SlideShare account.

One of the items we discussed during our presentation at the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting was how to find book reviews in PsycINFO. We performed this search demonstration live using ProQuest, and have recreated it below with screenshots. You can take similar steps to complete this search on APA PsycNET, EBSCOhost, or Ovid. If you need assistance, talk to a librarian, or contact us at psycinfo@apa.org.

Before we get started, remember that PsycINFO is not a full text database, so the full text of the reviews you find may not be displayed. If you’re searching PsycINFO through your college or university’s subscription, ask a librarian for help finding the full text. If you’re searching through an individual subscription to APA PsycNET, this brief tutorial may be of assistance. Continue reading

PsycINFO Expert Tip: Grants & Sponsorships

Do you use the Grant/Sponsorship field in PsycINFO? This field displays the funding sources that the authors include in their acknowledgements. The Grant/Sponsorship field will capture data about grant funding, but you’ll also see information on fellowships, scholarships, departmental awards, and more – any type of funding source that the authors acknowledge. Take a look at the variety of funding acknowledged here:

Screenshot of the Grant/Sponsorship field from a PsycINFO record on APA PsycNET.

The Grant/Sponsorship field from a PsycINFO record, shown here on APA PsycNET.

The Grant/Sponsorship field is divided into four sub-fields: Sponsor, Recipient, Grant Number, and Other Details. You’ll always see the Sponsor and Recipient sub-fields, even if the authors didn’t indicate who the sponsor was (though they almost always provide this information) or who was the named recipient of the funding. If the authors provide the grant number, we include that in a separate sub-field. Any other information about the funding source is added to the Other Details sub-field. This can run the gamut from the name of a scholarship to the name of a large-scale research initiative.

All four of these sub-fields may be searched by choosing the Grant/Sponsorship option. For example, try searching PsycINFO for your institution, or for a grant number (try KZCC-EW-103-2).

A screenshot of searching PsycINFO on APA PsycNET for the grant number KZCC-EW-103-2.

Searching PsycINFO, via APA PsycNET, for the grant number.

Why provide this information? It’s one more detail that we believe can be helpful in working with PsycINFO. Instructors can use the information to open a conversation about bias in research with their class; it can also be used as a source of ideas for researchers who are seeking funding, looking for collaborators, or want to find out if the funder was a government agency or commercial entity.

You won’t see the Grant/Sponsorship field on every record in PsycINFO, as we didn’t begin collecting this information until 2005. And of course, not everything indexed in the database includes funding acknowledgements.

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