| Activity: MS Graduate Library
Project
The following activity was designed for new
graduate students
in the MS in Counseling Psychology program at FSU. However,
anyone
can adapt this lesson for their own.
The following tutorials may be reviewed
before starting
this assignment:
Sources
for Information
Journal
Articles
On-line
Searches
Your
name:________________________________________Date:________________
The purpose of this library project is to acquaint you
with Psychology-related
library materials available at Frostburg State University (FSU) and to
improve your information acquisition skills.
Part A
1. Pick a psychological topic that is of interest
to you.
Write the topic that you are using for this project below:
Topic:___________________________________________________________
You may broaden or narrow this topic as you complete
this project.
If you do so, note any topic change in the margin.
BOOKS: Books are useful for obtaining a more
in-depth understanding
of a topic. It is important to keep in mind that, especially in
fast-moving
areas of research, books will be at least a couple of years
out-of-date,
even when they are first published.
2. Using Catalog USMAI
to locate books, note that you can restrict your search to books at FSU
and books not at FSU but at other libraries of the University System of
Maryland (which can be ordered through inter-library loans using the
computer).
Indicate the number of books available on your topic at each of these
locations
for two subjects related to your main topic.
Subject Heading #1
(specify)__________________________________________
Number of books at:
FSU______________
UMS______________________________
Subject Heading #2
(specify)__________________________________________
Number of books at:
FSU______________
UMS_______________________________
3. From the books that you have located in the previous
question, identify
those books more recently published that are the most relevant to your
topic (up to a maximum of ten books). Attach a printout of the
references
for no more than ten books.
Part B
JOURNALS: Journal articles are often the primary
sources of information
on research and theory in psychology. More up-to-date than books,
articles may still be one or more years behind the most recent findings
because of publication lags.
4. The focus of this project will be on locating
reports of empirical
research or literature reviews of empirical research. An emphasis
in the project will be on discovering and using the appropriate,
controlled
vocabulary to locate relevant references.
Begin by noting below all of the terms which you can
think of that may
be useful to find information on your topic. If you can think of
more than six terms, limit the number to six by choosing what you think
would be the six most appropriate terms. Using the Thesaurus of
Psychological
Index Terms located near the Reference Desk may be of help for this
exercise.
Also, Research
Port has
a term finder link in its system.
1.
4.
2.
5.
3.
6.
Now that you have chosen terms that are related to your
area of interest,
these terms can be used to locate articles using PsycInfo and other
databases.
Once a search has been performed, either the ‘Current Periodicals
Subscription List’ or MdUSA can be utilized to determine to which
journals
the FSU library subscribes to.
5. PsychInfo is a database which contains numerous
journal abstracts
and citations. PsychInfo can be accessed through the Research Port
search
engine. Log onto Research Port
and choose PsychInfo from the list of databases available to you.
Once at the search screen, perform a keyword search on your
topic.
Print out 2 separate references related to your topic of interest and
attach
to this assignment.
6. Also useful and found under Research Port
are the WilsonSelect Fulltext and
the MasterFILE and Academic Search databases. Change databases
and
select one of the two mentioned above. Instead of doing a keyword
search, this time use an advanced search. Print out the results
page
(Full text articles can be retrieved).
Part 3
INTERNET: The Internet is another useful research
tool that is
becoming more popular everyday. An abundance of
psychology-related
research and theory can be found by using various search engines on the
Internet. The focus of this part of the assignment is on
several
different search engines that may be helpful when conducting a
search.
7. Using any of the other search engines that the
Internet uses (Google,
Excite,
Yahoo,
Goto
etc.), search your topic and print out the first page of your
results.
From the library, you can reach other search engines by typing
http://www.(name
of engine).com.
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