PSYC 437 (Sia) - History and Systems of Psychology

Tutorial 2: What did my psychologist write? Finding books and articles by an author

In the previous tutorial, you learned how to find biographical articles about your psychologist. Now, look in those biographical articles for names of your psychologist's major works. It's important to realize that some psychologists wrote mostly books and some wrote mostly articles. The biographical articles should help give you a sense of whether your psychologist was primarily a book-writer or an article-writer.

Here's an example of the Publications section of a biographical article (from the Wikipedia article "George Kelly, psychologist.")

If your psychologist has written a major work that TLU doesn't have full-text access to, submit an Interlibrary Loan request.

• Interlibrary Loan is free!
• Articles usually arrive within a few days, and books within a week. 
• If you have any questions about the Interlibrary Loan form, just fill it out as best you can - we will email you back if we have questions about your request. 
• More information about Interlibrary Loan 

To find books by your psychologist, search by author in the Library Catalog

- Go to the TLU library catalog. The catalog of physical books is a subset of the PrimoDiscovery search, which also includes articles and other media types, so you want to make sure the drop-down says Physical Resource in Library.

- Go to Advanced Search to search by Author

- Sometimes the catalog lists birth and death dates - this can help you confirm that you've found the right person. If you find a book, write down the call number, check the location (Circulating Collection is most common - these are the books on the second floor), and check the status (Not Charged means not checked out).

- Some psychologists will not have any works in the TLU library catalog. Remember that you can also rely on articles or request a book using Interlibrary Loan. Sometimes you can read excerpts on Google Books, although you can't download from there. 

To find articles by your psychologist, search by author in PsycINFO 

 - Go to PsycINFO

- Enter your psychologist's name in the search box

- Use the drop-down menu to choose AU Author

- In your results list, you might find authors who share your psychologist's name but are actually different people. Use what you've learned about your psychologist's interests, institutional affiliation, and timeframe to figure out whether you're looking at the right person.

Sometimes, you may want to search beyond the discipline of Psychology. For example, three of Paul Broca's neurology articles can be found in PsycINFO, but more can be found in MEDLINE, a medical database. If you want to venture beyond PsycINFO, you can try looking for articles in PrimoDiscovery with the drop-down set to "Everything."

One important thing to know about PrimoDiscovery is that by default, it only shows articles that are available immediately in full-text. To see the full universe of resources, including articles available through Interlibrary Loan, use the Tweak My Results toggle. 

You will often find it useful to narrow your search by limiting to Academic Journals.