Resources for Psychology
Printed materials
The main collection of printed material (books and journals) for psychology can be found in the Hugh Owen Library on Level F (top floor), though some subjects can be found on Level E as shown below:
BF1-990 Psychology
BF173-175.5 Psychoanalysis
BF201 Cognitive Psychology
BF231-299 Sensation. Aesthesiology
BF309-499 Consciousness. Cognition
BF511-593 Affection. Feeling. Emotion
BF636-637 Applied psychology
BF712-724.85 Developmental psychology
GV706.4 Sport psychology
H61-HA32 Social science research methods
HM1033 Social psychology
HQ767-781 Childhood development
ML3830 Psychology of music
QP360 Neuropsychology / Biological psychology [Level E]
R726.7 Health psychology [Level E]
For general guidance watch this video, 'How To Find A Book'.
Tip for new students: it can be useful to browse the contents of the Effective Study Collection at the start of your course (one of many collections). It has books on time management, writing essays, research methods, referencing and so on. Borrow any that look useful for a good headstart with your studying.
Tip - Quartos! If a book is too big to fit on normal shelves it is called a quarto and QTO gets added after the classmark. These go in a separate section with bigger shelves. Many psychology books are so packed with knowledge that they count as quartos, so you need to check HM1033 QTO, QP360 QTO etc. The floorplans will show you where the quartos are (Level F; Level E).
Electronic resources
Primo Central
Primo is not just a catalogue of all the books and journals (both print and electronic) that the library provides access to. It also lets you find journal articles on the topics you are researching. It should always be your first place to go when you are looking for quality academic resources.
The easiest way to find articles on a topic is to go to Primo, sign in, then change the drop-down 'Aberystwyth University' box (which would search the contents of the library) to 'Primo Central'. Primo Central is a massive database of full-text journal articles on every subject.
Enter search terms then click Search. You will get a list of results, linking through to the full-text for each article.
If there are too many results then add refinement options from the left, or make your search terms more specific. If there are too few results then consider whether your search terms are too specific, or maybe use wildcards. It is possible to create quite complex search queries; see here for more guidance on making searches more or less specific.
Key psychology resources
If you wish, you can also search citation databases (which contain details of research and articles) and resources directly. For psychology the main resources are:
- PsycARTICLES - provides direct links to the full text for you to download. However, PsycArticles only provides access to journals published by the APA and is therefore limited in the range of topics it covers.
- Web of Science - summaries (abstracts) of scholarly journal articles and dissertations in psychology and related subjects. You can check for the availability of full text articles by clicking on the '@aber' icon next to search results.
- ScienceDirect - an information source for scientific, technical, and medical research.
Downsides of searching these databases directly:
- they are indexed in Primo Central too so their results would appear there anyway;
- searching them directly means means fewer results than searching Primo Central;
- results won't always lead to a full text article.
Benefits of searching these databases directly:
- there may be fewer results, but perhaps they will be more relevant;
- it is useful to have experience of directly searching sources.
Note that when accessing these databases directly while off-campus, you should sign in in to Primo first.
Search engines
There are also specialised academic or scientific search engines you could try. The results will probably be inferior to Primo Central, and often won't lead to full text, but you could try them and compare the results. The main ones worth trying are Scirus, Google Scholar, and Zetoc. None of these are included in Primo Central.
Information skills
Finding and evaluating informationReferencing and plagiarism
- Bibliographic referencing in academic work
- 'Plagiarism versus Good Academic Practice' - a learning object that helps you to consider what plagiarism is, and look at how you can adopt good practice in order to avoid it
- Our information skills pages
- The Effective Study Collection
- An online skills tutorial for psychology
- Drop-in sessions with subject librarians
Services for academic staff
Your subject librarian can provide skills training for students and staff, resource evaluation and more. For full details see this page.
