• THE core database for Psychology faculty and students
• A database of references and citations of psychology journal articles, textbooks, books, book chapters, and dissertations, NOT full text within the database (but full text can be a click away using "Find It"-see below
  
• Coverage from 1887-present
  

1. Write down the information you want to locate
2. Indentify the major concepts
3. Access PsychINFO through the library's Psychology Subject Portal and/or  Tripod
4. Select Thesaurus on the top of the page
5. Type in your first concept. Locate the most likely linked term from the list that comes back. Read the scope note, look over more general, narrower, and related terms to decide if any of these are more relevant.
6. Click search subject to search for that term as a subject.
7. Repeat this process with all of your major concepts. You may find that in certain cases, there is more than one good term for your concept.
   

• After you are done using thesaurus click on search at the top.
  
• Check the boxes next your search and click on combined checked using AND to find citations with all of those terms in them.
  
• If you've searched for any synonymous terms, combine those first using OR
  

Too Many Results? Limit your results by checking boxes in Limit Search To box on the right. You can limit results to peer reviewed articles and those after 1997, among others.

Not Enough Results? Go back to thesaurus and try other terms. Or try the Index for a listing of all the terms and phrases in the database.

After you combine your searches, look at the results and locate the articles, books, or chapters which are relevant to your topic.

• From your list of searches, click display to see the first ten results. Use next to get to the next ten results and so on.
• Results are displayed from newest to oldest
  

Journal Articles: Have journal title, volume, issue, and page numbers listed. Click on the "FIND IT" button at the bottom of the record to see if it is available in another database. If it is available, "FIND IT" will either take you directly to the article itself or to the database that contains the article. If it is not available in full text online but available in print on the shelves of McCabe, then there will be a link to Tripod. (This does not automatically mean we own that issue. For some recent subscriptions, we likely will not have older volumes). If it isn't available at all, use interlibrary loan to get the article from another library. "FIND IT" will often fill in the request for you. There will also be a small number of cases where there is a direct link from record to the full text of an article.

Books: Called monographs, they often list the table of contents. Click on "FIND IT" to get to a link to Tripod to check and see if we own. There will NOT be a link to the full text.

Book Chapters: Have a book title and page numbers in the citation. Use the same procedure as for finding books. Remember to put the title of the book when searching Tripod, not the title of the chapter.

Dissertations: These will not be available online or (for the most part) in print. You can make a request through interlibraryloan but libraries generally don't send out dissertations.

• If it isn't in our library, don't fret! You can request it from another library and have it sent here
• EZ-Borrow is the place to go make your requests. For books, use the request options in descending order on the left side of the page (Tripod, EZ-Borrow, Interlibrary Loan) for books and click on "journal articles" on the right hand side for (surprise, surprise) journal articles.
  

Contact me, Erik Estep, at eestep1@swarthmore.edu or x8503 for an appointment.

Reach me at the McCabe reference desk from 3-5 on Tuesdays, 12.30-3.00 on Wednesdays or 7:00-10:00 on Thursdays.