How To Search
PsycInfo

PsycInfo offers citations and summaries (not full-texts) to thousands of scholarly articles, book chapters, dissertations, and reports related to psychology, human development, cognition, nursing, medicine, and relationships. Users can find copies of the articles by checking the Library’s holdings and finding the call numbers of the journals containing the articles. Coverage: 1887-present.

Please be sure to press the log out button at the top right when you are through using PsycInfo!

Getting Started

Simply click on "PsycInfo" on the Libraries’ database list.

Basic Searching

(Words Anywhere)

> Connect keywords with AND to find articles that contain all the words.
Example: adult and development finds articles that contain both adult and development

> Connect keywords with OR to find articles that contain either word.
Example: intimacy or love finds articles that contain either intimacy or love.

> Connect keywords with NOT to find articles that contain the first word but not the second.
Example: marriage not America finds articles containing marriage but not America.

> Enclose phrases in quotation marks.
Example: "mid-life crisis" finds articles that contain this exact phrase.

> Use an * on the root of a keyword to find various forms.
Example: elder* finds elder, elders, elderly, eldercare

> If necessary, use parentheses to organize the search when combining methods.
Example: romance and ("senior citizens" or elderly) finds articles about senior citizens or the elderly that deal with romance.

Improving Searches

White tabs at the top left of the screen provide users with several ways of improving searches:

Advanced Search tab enables the user to limit the search to a specific area such as a certain source(journal), author affiliation, series title, or publisher.

Thesaurus tab enables the user to find related words. For example, typing in "thought content" will reveal "cognition". Thesaurus is useful when you are unsure of what keywords to use in a search.

Index enables the user to browse a list of subject headings and subheadings. For example, typing in "psychoanalysis" will reveal subdivisions like "psychoanalysis—literature" and "psychoanalysis and history".

Users can also limit searches by clicking the blue "Change" button on the top right of the main search screen.

Limiting allows the users to focus searches on a publication year, publication type, audience type, age group, language, media type, population, or population location.

Finding Copies of the Articles

A few citations now offer links to online texts. These citations display crimson flags next to the title and contain "EBSCO Online" links to the full texts. To find copies of other articles or books, you must look in the Libraries’ Catalog to see if the campus libraries own book or the journal containing the article:

> At the bottom of a citation, click the blue "Check for holdings" to enter the Catalog.
> The book or journal will appear if the library owns it.
> For journals: scroll down and see if the library has the appropriate month and year of the journal or magazine (Please note: if multiple headings for the journal appear, click on each heading to see if the library owns the appropriate month and year.)
> Write down the Location and Call Number for the journal or magazine.
(In the Gorgas Library, recent issues are located on Floor 2. Older, Bound volumes are on Floor 4M). If the Libraries do not hold the journal, the red message "Your search resulted in no hits!" will appear on the screen.

Printing, emailing, and saving

Checkmark the records that you want to print, email, or save.

Printing: Click the Print icon at the top right of the result list. Click the yellow "Print" button at the top right. Click "OK".

Emailing: Click the Email icon at the top right of the results list. Fill out "From", "Send records to" and "subject" fields. Click the "Send Mail" button at the top right.

Saving: Insert a disk in the computer. Click the Save icon. Click the "Save" button at the top right. Select "A drive" from the "Save in" menu. Click "Save".

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