The American Psychological Association has more than 150,000 members, more than 50 divisions, and is the largest social science organization in the U.S. While the website is busy and sometimes difficult to navigate, but there is useful information here. The APA Online has a Librarian's Resource Center that is often useful. The PsycINFO User Guide is found here. Note especially the search techniques. PsycARTICLES, the APA full-text dabase allows searching and browsing, but reading the articles requires a fee.
Although aimed at lay people, the American Psychological Association Library Research in Psychology pages may be useful. They contain some good ideas for instruction or guide preparation. The APA also has a Help Center with useful facts, advice, and information on how ordinary people can cope with common problems. PsycPORT.com is the APA psychology portal.The Encyclopedia of Psychology
is
a comprehensive site with many useful links.
Psych Web is authoritative and
quite comprehensive. Especially useful for students.
Psychology Free Online Medical
Advice provides authoritative answers to more than 500 common
questions
about psychology and mental health.
Psychological Research on the Net is an extensive, and quite current, annotated list of research by the American Psychological Society.
The Psychology
WWW Virtual Library is unusually comprehensive. Note the library
resources online. Good search engine.
There are several university guides to psychology resources. I assume that you will look at the UTK psychology subject pages. Here are a few others that I have found useful. University of Dayton has prepared an extensive resource guide for the history of psychology. Other guides have been prepared by the Davidson Library at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Psychiatry on-line is global in scope. The site is busy, but provides access to peer-reviewed materials under a variety of topical headings.
The American Psycho Analytics Association presents a searchable data base for journal articles, books, and book reviews. Key word and author searching.
Psyche Matters includes biographies, papers, links to books and periodicals and to appropriate websites.
School Psychology Resources Online is a reasonably comprehensive site and quite authoritative. Daily updates.
Course Resources on the Web: Social Psychology is a comprehensive site for undergraduate students and their teachers.
Internet Mental Health is an on-line handbook on several common psychological disorders. Selective and well organized.
The National Alliance for the mentally Ill contains a variety of useful items.
The National Institute for Mental
Health is particularly good for information on depression.
Psych Central is a selective listing of information about disorders. Simple format and well organized, especially useful for the beginner.
PubMed is an entrance to the National Library of Medicine database. Items retrieved tend to be technical and authoritative.
Web of Addictions is a simple, easily used collection of fact sheets about common addictions.
The ERIC/AE Test
Locator
is a good place to begin your search for an educational test.
1. You have been asked by a faculty member teaching psychology in a local high school to select links to comprehensive sites of psychology information for students taking a psychology introductory course. Which three to five comprehensive sites seem best?
2. Perhaps because of its more scientific nature, psychology has a substantial specialized nomenclature. This is also true for psychiatry--its medical cousin. A patron needs help with these words: "declarative memory," "monocular clue," and "NREM."
3. An undergraduate has been asked to write a paper on Abraham Maslow and his major contribution to the field. Where would you begin? Which source was most useful.
4. (Do not do with another biographical exercise). A patron needs biographical information on Elizabeth Loftus. To what degree to you need to go to a female biographical source to locate information about female psychologists?
5. An undergraduate student wants to write a paper on the psychological aspects of bulemia and anorexia, especially among teen age females. Which sources are most useful?
6. A public library user wants help in locating easily understood but authoritative content on eating disorders for her teen-age daughter. What would you do and why?
7. A beginning library science student needs help in finding research on "bibliotherapy." What sources would be useful?
8. A high school student is writing a paper on "depression" for her psychology class. She seems bright and eager. Would would you suggest that she do first? What sources would be most helpful?
9. A graduate student in education is looking for recent information on "test anxiety." This is an interdisciplinary topic. Which databases would be most useful?
10. Many phrases in psychology are named after a researcher/scholar. Using these terms--"Hering Window," "Ricco's Law," and "Weber's Law"--compare treatment in a variety of sources.
11. A graduate student appears at the reference desk with a question about an information source mentioned by her professor. She thinks it is called PREP and has something to do with psychology pre-print's. What can you discover?
12. A public library user has been told that he will need to take the Myers-Briggs test as part of a pre-employment interview.. In particular, he needs to know about it. How useful is it in predicting success in employment? Provide at least two citations.
13. An upper division undergraduate student has been told that birth order is important and that the first born is likely to be more successful in life. Identify and provide citations to literature that speaks to this issue. Are first born likely to be more successful? Most useful sources?
14. A parent has come to the public library seeking information about children's dreams. Where would you begin? Most useful sources?
15. A user has a scratch slip with "PsychCrawler" written on it. What can you discover about this source? Utility? Audience?
16. A patron wants the proper name for these phobias: fear of
falling,
fear of reptiles, fear of mirrors, and fear of dogs. She would also
like to
know a little bit more about each--some context and explanation.
Compare
treatment in print and WWW sources?
17. A public library patron has a family member who needs help with his mental health. The patron is reluctant to be specific about the nature of the problem. He wants you to help find community agencies, both governmental and other non-profit agencies in your county or a nearby one that would provide free or inexpensive counseling services. What can you find? What sources were most useful?
*18. A public library patron, a high school student, wants to know how many crazy people live in your state. What can you discover? What sources were most useful?
19. Hazelden is a noted self-help publisher. What can you find out about this firm?
20. A colleague wonders about the degree to which MEDLINE covers
issues
and topics of interest to the psychology. What can you find? Your
conclusions?
