Clinical and health psychology...

...materials can be found on the wide-ranging (and free!) Trip Database, which someone has recommended to me. It seems to be aimed primarily at clinicians and clinical professionals (namely medical practitioners), but the overlap into health psychology-related topics is sufficient to make it a potentially useful resource. It focuses on 'evidence', which includes systematic reviews, guidelines (split by country), Q&As and even e-Textbooks. Give it a go and let me know what you think!

Monitor on Psychology...

...is a wonderful online journal published by the APA (American Psychological Association). It covers a fascinating range of topics across the various fields of psychology and is well worth a read. It is published monthly, with all issues dating back to January 2000 (volume 31, issue 1) available to view for free online.

Psychology in the news...

…can be a great way of seeing how the wider world (well, the media, at least) perceive and report both psychology and the psychology profession. Generally, if the stories make it into the news then they are likely to be either ‘fun’ stories or fascinating new discoveries. Either way, news stories can be a way of finding out new things either in your own field of interest or in areas of psychology that you may never have considered. Relatively frequent examples of psychology (or psychologists) appearing in new stories range from educational psychologists being interviewed about ‘behaviour in schools’ to personal tales of amnesia or other such memory dysfunction.

Finding mainstream news articles can be done in two main ways. The first way is through the library’s subscription to a database called Nexis UK, which provides access to several decades worth of articles from all of the UK’s national newspapers (both broadsheet and tabloid), many regional UK newspapers and a range of international newspapers (including ones in foreign languages). You can normally find today’s issue, as well as ones from several decades ago, so it is a fantastic resource! It can be accessed through the library's Databases and e-Journals webpage (click on 'N' for Nexis UK).

Aside from newspapers, the other main way to find news stories these days is on the Internet. More ‘traditional’ sources such as BBC News and Reuters are very effective, although broader (but less reliable) searches can also be done through news search engines such as Google News and Yahoo News Search.

Don't forget: the European Computer Driving Licence...

...better known as the ECDL, is available to all psychology students through the library. It is a widely recognised basic computing qualification which looks great on CVs when applying for jobs! Even if you are already pretty good with computers, it's important to be able to demonstrate your proficiency and that's exactly what possessing an ECDL certificate can help do. More information, including details on how to sign up, are available on the ECDL web page.

Internet for Psychology...

…is a free-to-use online tutorial aimed specifically at psychology students in UK universities. It is provided by Intute as part of their ‘Virtual Training Suite’. The psychology tutorial can be accessed here.

The tutorial includes information on:

• journal databases and library catalogues
• internet research skills
• psychology conferences
• blogs, podcasts and discussion lists

...and much more. It also features plenty of links to get you started straight away.

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.