Tag: APA PsycInfo

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

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

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

Posted on by Marta Soto in For Librarians

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

Posted on by Marta Soto 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.

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.

 

https://youtu.be/7U6D8vKTTdI

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!

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: