PY 217 ~ Drugs, Brain, and Behavior
Guide to Library Resources

 

What counts as “scholarly research” in psychology?

Psychologists distinguish between peer-reviewed reports of original research in the field, and publications that are either “derivative” of the primary research or journalistic in nature. 
Sample articles: primary research ; secondary ; popular.

 

Find background information

The library has several reference books and databases that may be useful in selecting paper topics and gathering background information for your assignments.

 

AccessScience  - http://www.accessscience.com/server-java/Arknoid/science/AS/

 

Medline Plus Health Information - http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus

 

Merck Manual - http://www.merck.com/pubs/mmanual

 

Health & Wellness Resource Center – Gale Medical Encyclopedia; Mosby’s Medical Dictionary

 

Drug abuse sourcebook – Ref. HV5801 .D724 2000

Encyclopedia of drugs and alcohol – Ref. HV5804 .E53 1995

Encyclopedia of human behavior – Ref. BF31 .E5 1994


Handbook of social psychology – Ref. HM251 .H224 1998

 

Encyclopedia of psychology (Oxford U. Press) – Ref. BF31 .E52 2000 (8 vols.).

 

Encyclopedia of psychology (2nd ed.) (Wiley) – Ref. BF31 .E52 1994 (4 vols.)

 

Gale encyclopedia of psychology – Ref. BF31 .G35 1996

 

Oxford companion to the mind – Ref. BF31 .O94 1987

 

Find books

Books may provide you with useful information on drugs and their psychological, biological, and social effects. To locate books in our library, search the library catalog by keyword ("search everything") or subject. When you find an especially good book listed, use the "view" option to see what subject headings are assigned to it, to locate similar books. Also, check the bibliographies of useful books for additional sources.

If the BSC library does not have many books on your research topic, you can try searching WorldCat to see what is available worldwide. Use Interlibrary Loan forms if you need a book (or article) that is not available locally.

Find research articles

Go to the library's indexes & databases page to search for research articles on your topic. There are several indexes that may be especially useful for this course:

 

PsycARTICLES (1988-present)
PsycARTICLES is a database of >31,000 full-text articles from 50 journals and chapters published by the American Psychological Association, the APA Educational Publishing Foundation, the Canadian Psychological Association, and Hogrefe & Huber. The database includes all material from the print journals with the exception of ads and editorial board lists.

 

PsycInfo (1872 – present)

This database, created and maintained by the American Psychological Association, is the key source for finding scholarly research in the field of psychology.  It contains citations and summaries of journal articles (selected from >1,300 periodicals written in >25 languages), book chapters (in English from 1987), books, and technical reports, as well as citations to dissertations. References are added weekly. It has an excellent online thesaurus to help pull up just the right sources.

 

PubMed (1966 – present)

PubMed is the National Library of Medicine's premier database, covering the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, and the preclinical sciences. The MEDLINE file contains bibliographic citations and abstracts from close to 4000 current biomedical journals published in the United States and abroad. The file contains approximately 9 million records dating back to 1966. Coverage is worldwide, but most records are from English-language sources or have English abstracts.

 

Sociological Abstracts (1963-present)

This database covers sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. It provides abstracts of journal articles from over 1,700 publications, as well as abstracts of books, book chapters, dissertations, and conference papers.

 

Social Sciences Full Text and General Science Full Text (both 1983-present)

Each of these Wilson databases indexes more than 350 scholarly English-language periodicals in the social sciences and sciences, respectively.  While they are not as comprehensive as the databases listed above, they provide access to a useful subset of journal articles as well as some popular sources, many of them full text. 

 

Find popular articles

The library also subscribes to several general indexes (such as Academic Search Elite, Academic Universe, Expanded Academic ASAP, and ProQuest's PA Research II) that pick up some psychology journals, and offer the full text of many articles. These indexes cover a mixture of popular and scholarly journals; evaluate your sources carefully to check what you need!

 

Find the full text of articles that sound promising

You will probably notice that not all of the articles that sound good are available full text in the database you are searching. To see if an article is available full-text in another database, or if it's available in print or microfilm format in the Library, please consult Periodicals @ BSC on the Library home page.  And remember, if you need an article that is not available locally, you can use Interlibrary Loan.

 

Useful online sources

You should be extremely thoughtful in your use of material that is freely available on the Internet: evaluate, evaluate, evaluate!  Along with questionable or highly biased sources of information, there are some wonderful resources out there that may help you in your research.  Authoritative government sources often freely available; for instance:

 

NIH – National Institutes of Health.  http://www.nih.gov/

NIDA – National Institute on Drug Abuse.  http://www.nida.nih.gov/

NIMH – National Institute of Mental Health.  http://www.nimh.nih.gov/

 

Serious scientific research is also available in some parts of the web.  In addition of just using general search engines like google, try using a subject-specific search engine, such as Scirus, to tap into this research: http://www.scirus.com.

 

Avoid plagiarism: cite your sources!

Section 12g of The Everyday Writer (your English handbook) defines plagiarism as “the use of someone else’s words without crediting the other person” (p.119).  This definition includes not only direct quotation, but also close paraphrasing without giving proper credit.  Take careful notes from what you read and be sure to include accurate citations for your sources of information.

 

Get help with APA citation style:

Use The Everyday Writer, section 52.  This book is available in the Bookstore, in the Library (Ready Ref. PE1408 .L86 2001) and on the campus network (under Server, Server B, W95apps, Everyday; double click on setup.exe).

 

Use the APA Publication Manual for tough citation questions (Ready Ref. BF76.7 .P83 2001); they have an online site about citing electronic references (http://www.apastyle.org/elecref.html).

 

Bedford-St. Martin's also offers basic documentation tips online at http://www.dianahacker.com/resdoc.

 

 

Remember: As you work through the research process,

please feel free to ask the library staff for help at any point.