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Hi, my name is Jackie.
I am a librarian at Bucks County Community College.
I will demonstrate how to search and use the database PsycARTICLES.
First, lets get to the database.
If you start at the Bucks County Community homepage (www.bucks.edu)
click on the link to the Library. This link is located in the upper right hand corner.
Once you are at the Library page (www.bucks.edu/library) scroll down
and select the link for our database list.
This link is represented by a little laptop icon.
Our databases are listed in alphabetical order.
Or, you can go to the top of the database page
and next to the “show only” heading
click on “Any” and select a relevant
subject area. In our case, we are going to select
Psychology. This will change the list of databases
to display those most relevant to our subject area.
Scroll down, and you will see PsycARTICLES.
Click on the link for PsycARTICLES.
If you are off campus, you will need to login with
your Bucks username and password. If you are on campus
you will be taken directly to this search screen.
Within the search boxes, enter your keywords.
You can join your keywords by using AND, OR, NOT.
AND will bring together two subjects (fewer results)
OR will let you search for two subjects separately (more results)
NOT will allow you to exclude certain subjects from your search.
As you type
your keywords, you might notice a list of other terms will appear.
This is an auto-generated list
these words are not necessarily used within the database
There is not a guarantee that you will get results.
One thing you can do, is to look at the list for other terms
and use them to build your search.
If you see other terms that are used within the list
that you might want to use in your search at a later time
than write those words down.
For my topic, I want to know about a specific
disorder and the treatment for that disorder
so I am joining my terms with word “AND.”
I am going to search for those terms anywhere except full text.
Basically, I am doing a keyword search.
This will allow me to retrieve the articles in the database
that discuss obsessive compulsive disorder AND treatment.
You can also search by title, author or journal article.
Click on the “anywhere except for full text"
option and change it to something more specific.
You can also make your search more specific by using
the search options listed below the keyword search bars.
For this search, I am going to use
full text and peer reviewed. Full text will ensure that
my results will be of articles
that are included in their entirety
so I can read the full article right away. I am selecting peer reviewed
because I want to get good information.
Peer reviewed information is an article or publication
that is being reviewed by a board of professionals and scholars
they edit and provide feedback on an article
they give their final seal of approval and recommend it for publication.
I am really making sure I get the good stuff!
If you have an assignment that requires you to look into a certain
psychological methodology, data set
age group, or subject population
you can select those options here
in the “Search Options” section of the PsycARTICLES database.
To proceed with your search
click Search.
Here is my results list, you can see that I have 102 results.
not a bad list, but quite a few results.
So, if i wanted to limit that results list, I can
have access to those same search options that I just showed
you on the previous page, but now located on the
right-hand side of the results list page.
I am going to change the publication date.
Right now it is 1937 - 2013.
It might be interesting to look at 1937 from a historical perspective,
but I want current information.
So, to change the date, click and drag
the start and end date points, and click update.
You can see that narrowed my results list
down to 62 results.
Look at your list. All the keywords used are highlighted.
To view more information about an article, click on the article title.
This will take you to the extended record.
This includes title, authors, journal, date of publication
and typically an abstract. Sometimes the full text is listed
immediately below the Abstract.
An abstract is a short summary of an article.
Reading the abstract is a great firs step to take when reviewing an article.
Read through the abstract, then decide if you would like to use the article for your
assignment or not. If you do want to use the article,
you can download the full text by clicking the
link to the right-hand side that states “full text - pdf.”
You can also click on the disc icon
to export or save your article
or you can print directly from the database by clicking the print icon.
To get the citation for the article, click on the
cite link next to the little piece of paper icon.
Copy and paste the citation.
I will give a cautionary word to let you know that when you copy and paste
sometimes the formatting of the citation changes.
You will need to review that and match it to the APA (or other relevant) style guide.
The last detail about the PsycARTICLES database
I would like to show how to follow a reference trail.
Take a look at the references that an author or group of authors
used in writing an article.
Then, finding those same articles to further
your research. For example, in this article on
two different types of treatment for obsessive compulsive disorder
these authors used a series of
additional articles to support their statements
and research. You can look at the
works that they used within their article by clicking the references
link on the right - hand side of the screen.
This will take you to a list of all the research used
these authors to complete their work.
For articles that are already included within the database
you will see links to retrieving the full text of those articles.
Some articles are not available in full text.
You can always request those articles through Inter Library Loan.
As you are searching for your articles in PsycARTICLES
If you have any questions, or if you are not getting any results,
contact one of the Bucks Librarians.