NOTE: Make sure to upload your answers to the questions on this sheet in Canvas!

NOTE: Make sure to upload your answers to the questions on this sheet in Canvas!
Some general rules in doing library research include:
1.Library content is continually changing, similar to Google. A Google search one day gets a certain number of results and the next day the number changes. Libraries also update and improve access to their content, so what works today may not necessarily work next year. Also, procedures may differ slightly depending on how you access the library’s computer databases (e.g. a connection from home versus a dedicated terminal in the library).
There are often several ways of locating the same information. This assignment directs you to several resources in order to familiarize you with their existence, but it is not the only way! If you find yourself getting stuck when using one resource—and you are able to locate the information a different way—feel free to do so.
This assignment will not cover all of the useful library resources available to you, and the undergraduate psychology librarians will show you an even broader array of options. For now, go to the FIU library website at http://library.fiu.edu/ to get started.
STEP 1: PsycINFO:
PsycINFO is the #1 database in psychology. It is an online source for finding articles in psychology journals. Go to the library website, library.fiu.edu and click Research: Start. You can find PsycInfo several ways including:
1.Go to library.fiu.edu and click Research: Start. Click Subject Resources. Click PSY3213/3215: Research Methods.
Go directly to the Library Research Guide created for this course called PSY3213/3215: Research Methods at library.fiu.edu/psy3215.
Go to library.fiu.edu and click Research: Start. Click Subject Resources, followed by Psychology. Click the Databases tab on the Psychology page.
Click A-Z Databases from the Research: Start page. Find PsycInfo (this is what I usually do!)
There are several options in PsycINFO. You can do a Basic Search, an Advanced Search, or browse on your own. Using Advanced Search will allow you to limit your search to articles that are the most relevant, provided you have a keyword, author name, journal title, or article title already in mind.
There are numerous ways to limit your search results including:
1.to a specific range of years
to specific languages, methodologies, age ranges, etc.
to peer reviewed articles (if you want primary sources only which is required for Paper 1).
You can also search PsycINFO for multiple items, which may include a combination of an author’s name, journal title, or a keyword in the title or abstract of a specific article, etc.
For example, to search for articles by a specific author, type in the author’s last name followed by the first name (and middle initial, if you know it) in the first empty search box. In the drop-down box to the right of the search boxes, select AUTHOR(AU). For example, if you type in “Loftus Elizabeth” and choose author, your search will find at least 430 articles that include her name as an author (wow, right! What a prolific writer!)
You can follow a similar procedure to locate articles by subject, title, or keyword. For example, try using the word “eyewitness” as a search term in the document title. When I did this a month ago, the results returned at least 1777 publications (which might have gone up since I last looked!). That is WAAAAY too many to look through! Of course, if you do only peer reviewed article, this drops a lot (but still has 1301 articles with eyewitness in the title!).
When you get such a large number of results, you will usually want to narrow down your search. You can do this by entering different search terms, or you can do this by combining results from searches you have already completed. Every time you do a search, the results are saved in your “recent searches.” You can combine articles in the search history to narrow down your list of articles to your specifications.
Let’s say you want a list of all articles authored by Elizabeth Loftus with the word “eyewitness” in the title. You have already run searches on Loftus Elizabeth as an author and eyewitness in the title. Click on the Recent Searches link at the top of the page and you will see those previous searches listed. In the Combine Searches box, type “search #1 and search #2” and hit enter. Elizabeth Loftus’s publications regarding eyewitnesses will be shown. When I did this, it came up with only 45 articles including Loftus as an author and eyewitness as a word in the title. If I look at Loftus, Eyewitness, and Peer Reviewed, this search drops to 28. This is MUCH more manageable.