You said... We did...

…is the section on the library website where we update you on our actions to comments we receive in the library. It has just been updated with the latest information on our responses, so why not check it out. For example:

You said… “The signage is very confusing at Stratford”

We did… “We have produced simpler, bolder signage at Stratford library to help you find your way round”

You said… “I can’t always get in to the library to look at short loan items”

We did… “We have digitised popular articles and chapters to make them available online and we have thousands of eBooks and eJournals”

Reviews of psychology books and films...

...can be found on the PsycCRITIQUES Blog. Maintained by the APA - the same people who are responsible for PsycINFO and PsycARTICLES - it features regular posts commenting on recent book and film reviews in the area of psychology. All posts feature a link to the full text pdf review (which is normally a few pages long). Reviews cover a huge range of psychology related disciplines and can encompass popular releases as well as academic ones. For example, there is a link in a March 2009 post to a four page review of the psychology behind the hit film, 'Slumdog Millionaire'.

Online copyright tutorial...

…for UEL staff has been created by the library and uploaded to the following web address: http://blog.uelconnect.org.uk/llscopyright/. Information is organised into categories including, ‘images’, ‘photocopying and scanning’ and ‘PowerPoint’, among various others. Check out the webpages to make sure you are staying on the right side of the law.

Dissertations and theses held in the library...

...can be searched for via the library catalogue. The university is obliged to keep a copy of all doctoral theses submitted at UEL, and most of these make their way into the library’s collection. The library also holds a very small collection of Masters dissertations. To find either, simply begin your search on the library catalogue with the word ‘thesis’ e.g. thesis health psychology. To view a thesis, you will then need to ask at the library counter and they will fetch it for you.

Please note, that as ‘unpublished works’ it is against Copyright Law to photocopy, take notes from or reference a thesis / dissertation without the author’s prior consent. Unless you contact the author, the thesis / dissertation collection is of most use for seeing what one looks like and how you might approach the layout / formatting of your own thesis or dissertation.

Get more out of Intute...

...with the advanced search options. And don't be put off by the word 'advanced' - it's actually a quicker and easier way of finding high-quality websites for your research and general reading. For example, make your way to Intute - Psychology and click on 'advanced search'. From the advanced search screen, scroll down to 'resource type', deselect 'all resource types' and select 'blogs'. Enter your search (e.g. 'psychology') and click the green search button. This particular example should bring up over 30 blogs dedicated to different fields of psychology.

Other resource types you can choose from include...

• archives
• bibliographic databases
• government publications
• mailing lists and discussion groups
• news
• professional organisations
• reference sources
• statistics

...to name but a few. Go on, give it a go!

Quirky mind stuff...

…is how Professor Richard Wiseman, the popular psychologist, describes the daily posts on his blog. Intriguing photos, puzzles and video clips are added almost every day. Check it out, and be reminded of what weird and wonderful things the human mind is capable of…

Finding journal articles when you have a reference...

…is easy when you know how (but then again, isn’t everything!). Make sure you know how by following the simple steps below.

1) Check UEL’s online journals collection (most of our journals are online).

a) Go to the library catalogue (http://primo.uel.ac.uk), and click on ‘A-Z Journals' (near the top right hand corner).

b) In the window which pops up, type in the name of the journal the article was published in e.g. British Journal of Psychology.

c) If the journal appears in the results list then click on its name. If not, then skip to section 2.

d) The next window tells you the years available online e.g. ‘Available from 1975’. If this covers the year your article was published, then enter the article details (year, volume, issue, start page), and click on 'Go' to be taken to the article online. You may be asked to enter your Athens username and password.

2) Check UEL’s print journals collection (if not online, then we may have the journal in hard copy in the library).

a) Go to the library catalogue (http://primo.uel.ac.uk), and click on ‘Advanced Search’.

b) From the ‘Material Type’ drop-down list, choose ‘Journals’.

c) Enter the name of the journal (not the article) in the search box. Click Go.

d) If the journal appears in the results list, click on its name to open its full catalogue record.

e) Scroll down to the bottom of the catalogue record and click on the link under ‘availability and location’. Check the ‘summary holdings’ in the next window to see what years we hold in hard copy in the library e.g. ‘1904-1974’.

3) Make use of other libraries

If you cannot find the article in either UEL’s online journals collection or print collection, then you will need to make use of other libraries. You can do this by either visiting another library or by checking your eligibility to place an Inter-Library Loan request.

A brand new library building at Stratford campus...

…will be built over the next few years. We are currently at the planning stage and are looking for student input. All students based at Stratford campus should have received an email with a link to a very short survey to complete. If you didn’t receive the email, or deleted it by mistake, then follow the link on the library webpages (in the news section). There is also the opportunity to sign up as part of one of the student focus groups we will be holding. We want your ideas and suggestions on how the new library can best serve you as students, so don’t miss this opportunity to have your say!

Careers in psychology...

...is a website produced by the University of Worcester in a project funded by the Higher Education Academy's Psychology Network. It contains video presentations, each split up into bite-sized chapters, on seven career paths you may wish to follow with your psychology degree. Each video is presented by a practitioner in that area. It is a very accessible website, specifically aimed at students wanting to become a professional psychologist. The seven career paths are: forensic psychologist, occupational psychologist, educational psychologist, health psychologist, counselling psychologist, clinical psychologist and sport & exercise psychologist. It can be access from here: Careers in Psychology.

Teenagers vs. adolescents, counsellors vs. counselors...

...women vs. gender – which would you pick as your search terms?

The words you type in the search box on the library catalogue, PsycINFO, Google or any other search screen can make a huge difference to the results you find. Take the first example: teenagers vs. adolescents. Look them up in a dictionary or thesaurus and you will probably conclude that they are interchangeable and you could use either. However, look them up in PsycINFO and ‘teenagers’ returns less than 5000 results, while ‘adolescents’ returns a staggering 143,000 results. Why? Because ‘adolescents’ is a more academic term than ‘teenagers’ and PsycINFO is a database full of academic research articles. Try the same search on Google and you get the opposite result, with ‘teenagers’ returning more hits. The reason? Google finds web pages, web pages are generally not very ‘academic’ and neither is the word ‘teenagers’. The lesson? Tailor your search terms to the source you are searching.

As for the difference counsellors vs. counselors, it’s a little more simple. The first spelling is British; the second American. Increasingly the difference doesn’t matter when searching. For example, PsycINFO automatically searches for either spelling so returns the same number of results whichever you choose. However, neither Google nor the library catalogue has this facility, so you will need to try both. Then again, if you only want British articles, then perhaps it’s good that they don’t search for the American spelling at the same time...

Finally, women vs. gender – this is an example of when you have little choice but to try them both separately. They have different meanings, but can be used interchangeably or, indeed, differently dependent on the context. You will also need to refer to a thesaurus for further alternatives: female, feminist, equal opportunities…

Use Endnote to store and organise your references...

…and compiling your reference list / bibliography becomes a rather less arduous task. This clever piece of software allows you to export full bibliographic information from a book record on the library catalogue or a journal article in a database into your own personal ‘library’ of references. When it comes to typing up your essay, dissertation, research paper or whatever it is you are writing, you simply place your cursor at the precise point in your write-up where you want the in-text reference to appear, look up the item in your ‘library’ and the reference is added to your document both in-text and in the reference list with all the required information included (author, date, title, place of publication etc.). All you then need to do to format your bibliography is choose the correct referencing style from a list e.g. APA or Harvard or even one of hundreds of publication-specific formats (for publishing in journals).

Two versions of Endnote at available at UEL. Endnote X is the powerful desktop version installed on all PCs on-campus. Endnote Web is a free web-based version with all the main features, which can be used from anywhere either on or off-campus. Please note, however, that you will need to be on-campus to register for an Endnote Web account. More information on both versions is available on the library’s Endnote webpages.

New books in the library...

...added to stock during the month of February 2010 can be viewed from this link: February 2010 new books list. Please note that it only lists items purchased for stock from the library's 'psychology' book funds.

If you want to borrow any of these titles, then don't forget to check on the library catalogue first to make sure we have copies available. New books are popular and often fly off the shelves straight away! Please let me know if you have questions about any of these new library books.