Research Guides: *Psychology: Getting Started with Psychology

Best Bets for Psychology

PsycInfo This link opens in a new window
The most comprehensive index for scholarly literature in psychology.
PsycTests This link opens in a new window
Index to psychological tests, measures, scales, surveys, and other assessments. See Tests and Measures guide for more details.

Oxford Library of Psychology
Handbooks on a selection of topics, including sport psychology, cognitive psychology, happiness, and others.

Annual Review of Psychology
Literature reviews on areas of active psychological research, summarizing developments and providing extensive works cited.
Psych 101 Series
This is a series of books on psychology topics, such as Memory 101 or Motivation 101, that give in-depth overviews and bibliographies. Some are at Bates; some can be requested from other libraries using CBB Request.

International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences This link opens in a new window
Essays with further reading on all aspects of social and behavioral sciences.
Oxford Bibliographies This link opens in a new window
Annotated bibliographies in psychology, public health, and other fields; for a range of notable topics in each field, describes the seminal works and frequently used data sources.
Oxford Bibliographies offers peer-reviewed annotated bibliographies on specific topics in a growing range of subject areas. There are at least 50 specific topical bibliographies in each subject area. Each of these features an introduction to the topic. Bibliographies are browsable by subject area and are keyword searchable.

PsycInfo This link opens in a new window
The most comprehensive index for scholarly literature in psychology.
PubMed This link opens in a new window
Biomedical literature.
It does not include full text journal articles; however, links to the full text are often present when available from other sources.
ERIC This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive source for education.
PsycTests This link opens in a new window
Index of tests, measures, scales, and other assessments. Some entries, but not all, provide the text of the instrument.

A combined search of PsycINFO, Medline (PubMed) and ERIC is possible by selecting the "Choose Databases" menu in the EBSCO interface.

Why is PsycInfo worth getting to know?

More psychology articles than any other database.
Everything in it is relevant to psychology.
Updated weekly. (JSTOR may not have latest 3-5 years.)
It's the best way to search articles by method used (empirical, imaging, twin study, etc.).
It's the best way to search studies by test or measure used (MMPI, Beck Depression Inventory, etc.).
Find the first article published on a topic sorting by "Date Oldest." (Google Scholar can't be sorted by date.)
Every article is classified by subject. That means you get every article on a subject.
Created by the APA, it's the standard tool for psychologists.
BatesLink can take you to the full text article, or to an interlibrary loan request.

See these video tutorials for demonstrations of some of PsycInfo's advanced search techniques.

Contact:

Ladd Library 132
(207) 786-6268
cmurray2@bates.edu

I am usually at the Research Desk Mon. 10-1, Tues. 6-9, and Thurs. 1-4

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