Psychology Resources

Undergraduates

Postgraduates

Links to

Undergraduates

The Library has arranged a page for all undergraduates which contains most of the topics an undergraduate would need to know. The following information provides a guide to assist you in finding psychology information resources which are either held in the Library or are available electronically on the web.

The Library Home Page offers a gateway to locating the information sources provided by the Library.
One of the key accesses is to the Library's Catalogue. You should always use the library catalogue as your first starting point to find print or electronic books, journals and other resources that may be helpful in providing information about your topic. From here you will also be able to determine the availability and location of resources in which you are interested.
A few search examples are shown as follows:

Title search : you know the exact title e.g. A student's guide to studying psychology
Keyword search : you know some words but not the exact title or order of words e.g. psychology guide students
Author search : when you know names of individual authors, editors, compilers etc. or government departments and institutions. For individual authors, type the author's surname followed by the first name or initial, e.g. heffernan thomas or heffernan t

For further information in using the catalogue go to How to search the Murdoch Library Catalogue.

Finding print / electronic psychology reference resources (dictionaries, encyclopedias) via the Library catalogue

For background and general information on terms or concepts of psychology, there are many reference books such as psychology dictionaries or encyclopedias available. Use these resources to clarify the meaning of your topic and to check for synonyms (similar words) for your topic words.

Do a subject search for "psychology dictionaries" and you shall find a list of print or electronic psychology dictionaries, which is listed in alphabectical order.
Do a keyword search for "electronic psychology dicitonaries" and you shall find the following list of electronic psychology dictinaries which you can clarify the meaning of your topic. A few examples are listed here

All journals (print or electronic) subscribed to by Murdoch are listed in the catalogue. If you are given a reference to a journal article titled "Talk does not cook rice: beyond anti-racism rhetoric to strategies for social action" written by Pedersen, Anne; Walker, Iain; Wise, Mike from e.g. Australian Psychologist. Vol 40(1), Mar 2005, pp. 20-30 and you want to know if Murdoch Library holds the title, there are a number of options you can try:

1. At Murdoch library catalogue, do a title search for a "australian psychologist". You will see two entries, the first is for our print collection and the other is for the electronic version. You need to check the date (2005), volume (40) and issue(1) of the article you are referred to in order to decide which version you can use. In some cases, it may be available in both the print and electronic format.

2. Another short cut is via Citation Linker. This is however for online articles ONLY: You must enter at least a journal title or issn. Enter more details for better results.
If you cannot locate the items by either way, speak to a reference librarian on duty.

PsycINFO (Abstract)
is the most important source of finding research information in psychology. It indexes and abstracts over 1300 journals in more than 25 languages. It includes book chapters, books, technical reports and citations to dissertations. It covers the professional and academic literature in the field of psychology and psychological aspects of related disciplines. Even though it is an abstracting databases, it has the icon linking you to find full text journal articles in electronic format (if it is available) or to the catalogue to check if we hold the print version.

PsycARTICLES (Full text)
is a database of full-text articles from journals published by the Amer ican Psychological Association. The database includes all material from the print journals with the exception of advertisements and editorial board lists. All titles are also indexed in the PsycINFO database. Click here to access the list of full text titles

ProQuest (Full text)
Proquest is a service which provides access to a number of databases, with a high proportion of the contents in fulltext. Several databases within the collection are of some use for health sciences, but the whole collection can be searched at once.

Scopus (Abstract)
It is an abstracting and indexing database that searches across 14,000 peer-reviewed titles from more than 4,000 international publishers. Subjects covered include health and life sciences, chemistry, physics and mathematics, engineering, earth and environmental sciences, social sciences, psychology, and economics, business and management

How to open a full text online journal article via PSY Databases

Having done a search via any of the above databases, the most essential step is to get hold of the article. Within each record if there is a button, click on and a new window will display:

When the full text is available, the page will provide links directly to the full text. In this example, full text is available via Synergy Blackwell Current.

Click on the  icon to connect to the full text of an article. If you are from off campus, you will be directed through the proxy and you will be asked to enter your Murdoch Username and Password.

If the full text of an article is not available electronically, you will still be given the option to check the Murdoch University Library catalogue to see if we hold the article or book in print, click on next to Murdoch University Library Catalogue

Library Portal

Being a postgraduate, I would assume you are familiar with the headings listed for undergraduates , however if you are not sure, you may like to go back and check those headings before you proceed.

Search other Universities' Catalogue and Libraries Australia

Very often, you would be given a book or jounral title which is not held at Murdoch. You can check Western Australian Libraries individually or you can use Libraries Australia which shows holdings within all Australian tertiary institutions. To obtain any items which are held in other tertiary institutions, you need to register with document delivery . Once you have been given your login and password, you can then submit your request via this system which is known as LIDDAS. All information relating to LIDDAS is listed here. Please see the psychology librarian if you need assistance.

A number of book titles can now be accessed via the Ebooks page.

Locate psychology journal articles via PSY or other Databases

For postgraduates, your area of interest may not focus only on psychology, as such you may like to check the Browse by Subject Area in the middle of the library databases page. Click on the down arrow to see the range of subject areas. If you have not done a database search, you may like to go back to the undergraduates database section.