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 SOCIAL/BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES RESEARCH WORKSHOP
FALL SEMESTER 2006
LIBRARIAN: Rachael Cathcart

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Activities: In this session you will learn how to access the Library's catalog and databases, where to locate useful resources for completing assignments, gain practice in navigating selected databases, and discover where to find help for correctly citing sources.

Goals: At the conclusion of this session you will be able to:

1. Access the library's catalog from home or campus;
2. Locate helpful databases for finding relevant scholarly literature in areas of psychology, social work, and counselor education
3. Navigate selected databases as well as organize and retrieve records;
4. Find information on correct citation procedures;

Accessing Information:

The address of the Library’s web site is (http://www.fau.edu/library). In order to access databases from home, you must use EZ Proxy. Enter your Owl Card number where designated.  

Many useful databases can be found by going to Research Help under Quick Links on the homepage and then selecting What's Your Major? followed by Psychology, Social Work, Counselor Education, or Social Psychology. Databases can also be located in alphabetical and subject order by selecting Index/Databases under Quick Links. (See below for direct links to these).

EVALUATING INFORMATION If you are not using one of the "Electronic Databases" listed above or other databases via the FAU Libraries Electronic Collection, you need to consider some of the following questions when evaluating information from the Internet: 1. How authoritative is the source of the information? 2. How accurate is the information? 3. How reliable is the information? 4. How current is the information? 5. How relevant is the information to my topic?

SELECTED DATABASES

You must use EZ Proxy to access databases from off campus.

 PsycINFO  | 1806-present |  Vendor: CSA
PsycINFO provides access to international literature in psychology and related disciplines. Unrivaled in its depth of psychological coverage and respected worldwide for its high quality, the database is enriched with literature from an array of disciplines related to psychology such as psychiatry, education, business, medicine, nursing, pharmacology, law, linguistics, and social work. Nearly all records contain non-evaluative summaries, and all records from 1967 to the present are indexed using the Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms.

PsycARTICLES  | 1988-present | Full Text | Vendor: APA
Contains the full text of articles from APA journals and selected EPF journals.

Psychology: A SAGE Full-Text Collection | 1970-present | Full Text | Vendor: CSA
This resource provides access to the full text of 35 journals published by SAGE and participating societies, some journals going back 36 years, and encompasses over 21,600 articles. It covers such subjects as Applied Psychology, Assessment, Child Development, Clinical Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Counseling Psychology, Cross-Cultural Psychology, Cultural Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Educational Psychology, Environmental Psychology, Family Studies, Group Work, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, Language Acquisition, Latin American Studies, Learning Disabilities, Measurement, Neuropsychology, Personality, Philosophical Psychology, Psychiatry, Psychology of Diversity, School Psychology, Social Psychology, and Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.

Social Services Abstracts  | 1980-present  | Vendor: CSA
Provides bibliographic coverage of current research focused on social work, human services, and related areas, including social welfare, social policy, and community development.

Social Work Abstracts  | 1977-present | Vendor: SilverPlatter ERL
Contains more than 45,000 records, spanning 1977 to the present, from social work and other related journals on topics such as homelessness, AIDS, child and family welfare, aging, substance abuse, legislation, community organization, and more.

ERIC  | 1966-present | Vendor: CSA
Covers education-related research from conferences, meetings, government documents, theses, dissertations, reports, audiovisual media, bibliographies, directories, books and monographs.

Academic Search Premier | 1975-present | Full Text  | Vendor: EBSCO
Academic Search Premier, designed specifically for academic institutions, is the world's largest scholarly, multi-disciplinary full text database containing full text for nearly 4,700 publications, including more than 3,600 peer-reviewed publications. In addition to the full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for nearly 8,200 journals in the collection. This scholarly collection offers information in nearly every area of academic study including: computer sciences, engineering, physics, chemistry, language and linguistics, arts & literature, medical sciences, ethnic studies, and many more. Academic Search Premier is an enormous collection of the most valuable peer-reviewed full text journals, offering critical information from many sources unique to this database.

OmniFile Full Text Mega Edition  | Some Full Text | Vendor: H. W. Wilson
Wilson OmniFile Full Text, Mega Edition is a multi-disciplinary database providing the complete content - indexing, abstracts, and full text - from six of Wilson's full-text databases: Education Full Text, General Science Full Text, Humanities Full Text, Readers' Guide Full Text, Social Sciences Full Text, and Wilson Business Full Text. Full-text articles from five additional periodical databases are also included when available: Applied Science & Technology Full Text, Art Full Text, Biological & Agricultural Index, Index to Legal Periodicals & Books, and Library Literature & Information Science Full Text. Full-text coverage begins in 1994. Each database has its own start dates for indexing, abstracting, and full text; start dates for full-text rights to individual journals vary within a database.

Web of Knowledge  | Vendor: Institute for Scientific Information
Provides access to the Web of Science databases and Current Contents Connect.

Web of Science | 1945-present | Vendor: Institute for Scientific Information
 Three unique citation databases which allow searching cited references as well as traditional searches independently or in combination: the Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Arts and Humanities Citation Index.

ProQuest Digital Dissertations see ProQuest Dissertations and Theses | 1861-present | Vendor: ProQuest
Covers every doctoral dissertation completed in the U.S. at accredited institutions for the last 150 years. Includes some master's theses and foreign language dissertations.

DigitalCommons@FAU  | Some Full Text | Vendor: ProQuest Direct
DigitalCommons@Florida Atlantic University is a DigitalCommons project that highlights university scholarship of various types (working papers, journal articles, dissertations and theses, etc.).

Primate Lit  | Vendor: Wisconsin and Washington Primate Research Centers
 Open Access
The PrimateLit database provides bibliographic access to the scientific literature on nonhuman primates for the research and educational communities. Coverage of the database spans 1940 to present and includes all publication categories (articles, books, abstracts, technical reports, dissertations, book chapters, etc.) and many subject areas (behavior, colony management, ecology, reproduction, field studies, disease models, veterinary science, psychology, physiology, pharmacology, evolution, taxonomy, developmental and molecular biology, genetics and zoogeography).

CSA Neurosciences Abstracts  | 1982-present | Vendor: CSA
The journal covers all aspects of vertebrate and invertebrate neuroscience, emphasizing basic research studies but also including such devastating neural diseases as Alzheimer's.

NASW Clinical Register  | 2003, 12th ed. | Full Text | Vendor: SilverPlatter ERL
The NASW Register of Clinical Social Workers, 12th Edition provides a listing of clinical social workers who have met national standards for education and experience established by the NASW Competence Certification Commission on recommendation of the Committee on Clinical Social Work.

Mental Measurements Yearbook | 9th to 16th Yearbooks July 2004 | Some Full Text | Vendor: OVID
Mental Measurements Yearbook, produced by the Buros Institute, contains full text information about and reviews of all English-language standardized tests covering educational skills, personality, vocational aptitude, psychology, and related areas as included in the printed "Mental Measurements Yearbooks."

Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research | Some Full Text  | Vendor: University of Michigan
 Open Access
An archive of computer-based research and instructional data for the social sciences administered by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.

RefWorks | Vendor: Refworks
 Instructions for off-campus access via EZproxy 
With RefWorks, users can create their own personal database by importing references from online databases.  They can use these references in writing their papers and automatically format the paper and the bibliography in seconds.  

LIBRARY RESEARCH GUIDES

Alzheimer's Disease

Counselor Education

Resources for Tests & Other
Research Instruments

Social Work

General Psychology

Social Psychology

Higher Education: Academic Career Guide

CITING SOURCES 

      A helpful site for general information on writing papers as well as how to correctly cite sources is The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing.

      A good site for specific information on correctly citing electronic sources in APA style is provided by Dr. Mary Ellen Guffy at APA Style Electronic Formats.

      A Need help writing a paper, dissertation, or thesis? You can schedule an appointment online with the Writing Center.

      Don't forget about RefWorks to organize your citations!

Finding Additional Assistance:

Ask-A-Librarian email & AIM reference help

Reference desk phone number: 561-297-3785

Make an appointment with a librarian: One-on-one reference consultation