USING THE LIBRARY

1. USING THE LIBRARY WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TO SEARCH EFFECTIVELY FOR MATERIAL FOR ASSIGNMENTS

2. HOW TOPICS ARE ORGANIZED • StFX and most academic libraries use the Library of Congress Classification Scheme. Understanding this can assist you in finding material in a library and make sure you order exactly the item you need for your research. • The call number in the Library of Congress system starts with two letters. The first identifies 24 main subject classes. Psychology publications are primarily found under B: Philosophy; Psychology; Religion. • Each main subject class has specific subclasses, identified by a second letter. BF—Psychology is a subclass under B. • There are then categories under each subclass that are identified by adding numbers, dashes, and decimals to the letters.

3. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CLASSIFICATION SCHEME: Used by most libraries http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcco/lcco.html

4. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CLASSIFICATION OUTLINE CLASS B: PHILOSOPHY. PSYCHOLOGY. RELIGION (Click each subclass for details) Subclass B Philosophy (General) Subclass BC Logic Subclass BD Speculative philosophy Subclass BF Psychology Subclass BH Aesthetics Subclass BJ Ethics Subclass BL Religions. Mythology. Rationalism Subclass BM Judaism

5. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CLASSIFICATION OUTLINE CLASS B: PHILOSOPHY. PSYCHOLOGY. RELIGION Subclass BF BF1-990 Psychology BF38-64 Philosophy. Relation to other topics BF173-175.5 Psychoanalysis BF176-176.5 Psychological tests and testing BF180-198.7 Experimental psychology BF203 Gestalt psychology BF207-209 Psychotropic drugs and other substances BF231-299 Sensation. Anesthesiology BF309-499 Consciousness. Cognition including learning, attention, comprehension, memory, imagination, genius, intelligence, thought and thinking, psycholinguistics, mental fatigue BF501-505 Motivation BF511-593 Affection. Feeling. Emotion etc.

6. PUBLICATION FORMATS • Books: Come in many categories. Your best sources would be reference books, textbooks, and edited collections bound in a single volume. They are almost always in print. • Periodicals: Can be series, journals, magazines, newspapers, newsletters: These are forms of publications that are published at regular periods, e.g., weekly, monthly, or quarterly. • Academics tend to use the terms ‘journal’ or ‘serial’ for an academic periodical. • The term ‘magazine’ is used for popular periodicals that are usually illustrated and found on newsstands. They may be in print or available on the Web. • Magazines, newspapers, and newsletters should not be the primary sources for an academic paper, although you might cite them for additional information to add interest. They may be good places to give you ideas and get you started. They may be in print or found on the Web.

7. FIRST ABOUT BOOKS • Books are the primary publication format for information in many disciplines, especially in the humanities. • Books that you might use come in different forms: • Reference books: Dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc. Good for basic information and definitions. • Single or multiple author books on one topic, often textbooks. • Edited books, where one or more editors put together a collection of papers by several different authors. Each chapter is by a different person. These are often collections of research papers or review articles and can be very useful sources for writing a Psychology paper because a collection can give you a variety of perspectives on one topic.

8. WHY USE BOOKS? • Books provide in-depth, broad-based coverage of a topic. • Books often give a good review of an area.

9. STRENGTHS OF BOOKS • Historical/background information on a topic—major theories, definitions, and overview. • Puts your topic in context with other important issues. • Often, multiple authors provide multiple points of view on your topic. • Can be checked out & used at home. DON’T FORGET REFERENCE BOOKS

10. LIMITATIONS OF BOOKS • May not have the most current information. Books take an average of two years to be published. • May contain more information than you have time to read. • Are often not the primary source of information, so that you are reading another’s interpretation of what was said. • The authors biases have not been screened or challenged by referees.

11. NOW ABOUT PERIODICALS • Serials and journals are the main sources for information on research in Psychology. • Some journals are focused on a single sub-area of psychology, e.g., Journal of Educational Psychology, Child Development, Neuropsychologia; others are general, e.g., Psychological Science, Psychological Bulletin. • Psychology journals contain research reports by the researchers themselves (primary sources), review articles summarizing an area of research, book reviews, and critiques of research reports.

12. WHY USE JOURNALS? • They provide concise, focused information in a specific area. • The information is more current than that in books. • There are many more possibilities for research-based academic material in Psychology.

13. STRENGTHS OF JOURNALS • They are often primary sources, so that the information has not been filtered through another reader. • In a refereed journal, a research report has been reviewed and critiqued prior to publication. • The literature reviews at the beginning of a research report can give you a good overview of the most important and relevant research on a topic and ideas for other sources of information. • The articles are short (typically 5–25 pages); often a great deal of information in a small space. • Review articles can be very valuable in providing a concise overview of an area.

14. LIMITATIONS OF JOURNALS • Research reports can be technical and jargon-ridden, and particularly difficult for beginning Psychology students to read. • No library can afford to stock all possible journals in a discipline, even in this day of electronic copies of many journals. That is the value of consortiums of several libraries that share their holdings. Novanet is one such consortium. • Some journals are obscure and it is difficult to obtain material from them quickly.

15. TO FIND WHAT’S BEEN PUBLISHED ON YOUR TOPIC • If you come into the library, you can search from the library reference computers. • If you are at home, you can search from your home computer. • Once you have an idea of what you are looking for, you can check Novanet from the computer to see if any Novanet libraries hold the item you want.

16. SEARCHING FROM HOME • Start with StFX home page and click on the Libraries link.

17. SEARCHING FROM HOME • Click on Electronic Resources to take you to all the electronic databases that are available to registered students at StFX • The databases are electronic lists of publications specific to various disciplines. They are cross-referenced and can be searched in many different ways.

18. SEARCHING FROM HOME • There are four links on the left. The first two will be the most important for your searches. • The Indexes and Fulltext Databases is the one we will follow now. • The Serials Database lists all the periodicals available through the StFX library. It is useful if you want to know if a particular journal is available through the library. • Click on Indexes and Fulltext Databases.

19. SEARCHING FROM HOME • This is a list of all the databases that StFX subscribes to. • Several can be useful sources for Psychology information. • PsychINFO is the most important database for finding information on Psychology topics. Click there.

20. SEARCHING FROM HOME • Now you can start your search to see what is available on your topic. • The most difficult part is narrowing down your topic. Let’s start with a broad topic, doing a basic keyword search and see what happens. • Type ‘aggression’ in the first box beside Find and click Search.

21. SEARCHING FROM HOME • This produced a list of 21,420 publications listed at 10 per page—far too many to be useful. • However, it is informative to take a look at some of them. • The next screen shows the first five publications. Note how different the various topics actually are although they all fit under aggression.

22. Hot link to more information about the publication. To keep a list of what interests you. Is it available through StFX?

23. SEARCHING FROM HOME If partner abuse as an aspect of aggression was your real interest, you might click on the 2nd reference and get this. The next two screens show the rest of that page. References link will take you to all the references that were used by these authors. Possible keywords for further search.

24. The abstract gives a brief summary of the research. This can help you decide whether the publication fits with your interest. Clicking on Subject hotlinks automatically searches that related topic. A quick way to get more focused information.

25. Peer reviewed. It’s available in a print version and in StFX library.

26. SEARCHING FROM HOME • Now let’s see what happens if we click on the Subject link ‘partner abuse’ in the 2nd reference from the search on ‘aggression’ as a keyword. • This search results in 1,936 publications listed in chronological order starting with the publication that started the search. • You can explore these just as we did for the results of the ‘aggression’ keyword search.

27. SEARCHING FROM HOME • After a general search you may come to a clearer idea of the topic you want to explore. To start a more detailed search, click the New Search link at the top of every page. • To do this well, it is helpful to understand what are called ‘Boolean connectors or operators’: and, or, and not; and the term ‘fields’.

28. Pull-down menus for Boolean operators, and, or, and not. Menu pulled down for fields, or categories that you can search under.

29. BOOLEAN OPERATORS • Boolean operators of interest here are three connecting words: and, or, and not, that help you either limit or expand your search. • Each one has a specific effect on how a search is conducted.

30. A & B A B BOOLEAN OPERATORS: AND A represents every record with ‘rock’ in the requested field. B represents every record with ‘roll’ in the requested field. A & B represents every record with both ‘rock’ and ‘roll’ in the requested fields. A search for ‘rock AND roll’ (using the connector AND) locates all records with both ‘rock’ and ‘roll’. It will locate items about rock and roll music. It might also locate records that contain both words in a different context, such as “A rock will roll quickly on a steep hill."

31. A A B B BOOLEAN OPERATORS: OR A search for A OR B, i.e., ‘rock OR roll’, will locate all records containing either the word ‘rock’ or the word ‘roll’ and sometimes both. It will retrieve items about dinner rolls, tumbling, rocks, music, gemstones, diamonds, etc. A search for A OR B, i.e., ‘rock OR roll’, will locate all records containing either the word ‘rock’ or the word ‘roll’ and sometimes both. It will retrieve items about dinner rolls, tumbling, rocks, music, gemstones, diamonds, etc. ‘A’ OR ‘B’

32. BOOLEAN OPERATORS: NOT A search for A NOT B, i.e., ‘rock NOT roll’, will locate records containing the word ‘rock’ but NOT the word ‘roll’. It will retrieve items about rocks, diamonds, etc. A search for ‘roll NOT rock’ will retrieve items about bakery rolls, rolling and tumbling, etc. A NOT B B NOT A A & B B

33. BOOLEAN OPERATORS • If you want a broad general search, or you want to expand your search, use the connector OR. • If you want to limit your search use the connectors AND and NOT. • If you are retrieving too many records on your topic, try adding another search term with the connector AND. • If you are retrieving too many records on an unrelated topic, try eliminating a word with the connector NOT. • If you are retrieving too few records on your topic, try adding another search term with the connector OR. If you just enter a phrase, say ‘partner abuse’, the search will pick up all instances of the phrase just as if you had used the connector AND, plus all instances of ‘partner’, plus all instance of ‘abuse’. If you want only the exact phrase, place double quotation marks around it or use the connector AND.

34. FIELDS • Fields refer to various aspects of documents. When you view document information resulting from a search, the fields are the headers down the left-hand side. • You can search in any of the fields, and may combine more than one. The most useful are: • Default fields—when you are not sure of the exact terms that might have been used in the document. Very general. • Title—when you know some words in the title. • Author—when you want to see what a particular author has published. • Subject—if you have a specific area in mind, e.g., family violence. • Key concepts—these are broad general concepts, like aggression. • Abstract—restricts search if you are sure the term will appear in the abstract. • Source—useful if you know the periodical an item appeared in.

35. NOW LET’S NARROW OUR SEARCH • Suppose that you are interested in whether boys and girls play differently. • Searching ‘play’ or ‘children’ alone produces far too many sources (over 228,000 and 43,000 respectively). • Searching “children’s play” in Default fields reduces it to 618 sources. • Combining “children’s play” AND “sex differences” reduces it further to 74 sources. See next slide.

37. Some of these are linked to full text copies of the articles and others are available in the StFX library. • This might be a good place to stop searching while you explore what is available. • Start reading the abstracts of these articles. • Note: Avoid Dissertation Abstracts International. StFX has only the abstracts and copies of the full document are costly and take too long to arrive.

38. ONCE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU WANT • If the item is not available electronically: • ...and you cannot come to StFX or another Novanet library, contact Extended Library Services for assistance in getting what you need. • …and you can come to StFX or another Novanet library, order online through Novanet and pick up the item at the library you designate. There is a small charge for this service. • If the item is available electronically, download it to your computer and print it out.

39. LET’S LOOK FOR IT ON NOVANET Suppose that these four items were placed in your folder while searching PsycINFO. Three are journal articles and one is a chapter in an edited book. Let’s see if we can find them on Novanet.

40. SEARCHING NOVANET FROM THE LIBRARY’S WEB SITE CHOOSE NOVANET.

42. CONSORTIUM MEANS YOU CAN BORROW AT ANY OF THE NOVANET LIBRARIES MEMBERS OF THE NOVANET CONSORTIUM OF SHARE THEIR RESOURCES

43. CHOOSE THE NOVANET CATALOGUE LINK.

44. SEARCH OPTIONS: Keyword or Exact. We’ll use Exact.

45. FIELDS AGAIN with slightly different choices.

46. Searching for the title of the book. Note that this is not the title of the chapter.

47. The book is available in one of the Novanet consortium libraries. Now we click on the title to see where to get it.

48. Click on title again to get full information on this title.

49. Location Call number Availability Novanet Express

50. If you want to e-mail this information to yourself, click here. Then click here.