Unreliable websites...

...are everywhere on the Internet. If you're planning on using information you've found online in one of your assignments then you need to be very careful. Often the best thing to do is to only use information from academic (.ac.uk) or government (.gov.uk) sites as they are likely to be more reliable. Of course, this isn't always possible and there are lots of other factors to consider, too (e.g. is the website up-to-date?). So what do you do?
I would suggest the first thing to do is get clued up about evaluating websites. There is advice about this in the Evaluating Information section of UEL's Info Skills site. I would also recommend exploring an excellent online tutorial called the Internet Detective. If you're still not sure whether or not a website is reliable, then don't use the information in your assignment. It's as simple as that!

If you've forgotten your Athens password...

...then there's now a quick and easy way to reset it. The instructions have just been added to the Library's Athens webpage. Lots more helpful advice is also available on the page.

Journals coverage on PsycINFO...

...now extends to over 2,480 titles, covering all fields of psychology and counselling, as well as the related areas of coaching and guidance. The APA website provides a full list of all journal titles indexed by PsycINFO. The list is regularly updated, but if you want to keep really up-to-date, then they also provide a list of recently added titles which don't yet appear on the complete list. PsycINFO is, of course, primarily an index of journal articles (you can use Find an e-Journal to see if we have full-text at UEL). However, there is also a list of full-text titles available from PsycARTICLES, with all of these full-text journals being automatically included in PsycINFO (so there is no need to search both databases!).

New books in the library...

...added to stock during the month of February 2011 can be viewed from this link: February 2011 new books list. Please note that it only lists items purchased for stock from the library's 'psychology' book funds.

Lots of new editions this month, including two popular statistics books: Dennis Howitt's "Introduction to statistics in psychology (5th edition)" and Neil Salkind's "Statistics for people who (think they) hate statistics (4th edition)". We also have new editions of other popular titles, including the twelfth edition of Julien's "Primer of drug action", the fifth edition of Arnold's "Work psychology" and the third edition of Marks' "Health psychology". Brand new titles added to stock include a new career guidance book by Anthony Barnes called "An introduction to career learning and development, 11-19", plus Luttrell's "Qualitative educational psychology".
All books can be found using the library catalogue.

There's more to the library catalogue...

…than just being able to search for books and journals. For example, did you know that you can save your search queries for future reference and set up alerts to be notified when new books are added to stock? No? It’s easy enough to set up. Simply sign-in to the catalogue, run your search as normal and then click on the ‘Save query’ link which appears to the left of the results (just below the search box, in fact). There is then an option to save the query or set up an alert. You can manage your saved queries and alerts by clicking on ‘My Account’ in the top right of the screen.

Ever wondered what the ‘e-Shelf’ link in the top right of the catalogue screen is used for? The e-Shelf is where you can save lists of useful books and journals and then organise them into folders. For example, you might wish to add a list of reading for your module so that you can easily refer back to it and see which books are currently available. To add items to your e-Shelf, make sure you are signed in to the catalogue and then click the little white star which appears next to each result in the results list. The star turns yellow, indicating it has been added. If you click on the e-Shelf link in the top right of the page you can then view and organise all items you have added.

Free online research collections...

…are now available through JISC Content.JISC are an official UK universities organisation and they have sourced content from a large number of highly reputable bodies, including the British Library and The National Archives. It is well worth exploring the site.

On the topic of free content, many top American universities are now offering free online courses. These include a growing number of free psychology lectures. Yale University, for example, offer an entire series of 18 hour-long lectures on ‘An Introduction to Psychology’ free of charge on YouTube.

More journal articles and research papers...

…can be found by making use of Web of Science. While we may recommend EBSCO PsycINFO and ScienceDirect as the main databases for most courses in the School of Psychology, Web of Science is an excellent source of further research. It is what is known as a ‘citation database’, which means that it indexes a large number of journals (over 10,000 different publications) and conference papers (currently over 120,000) but without the full-text you may find in some other databases. You can search for the full-text within UEL’s collections by clicking on the ‘SFX’ link which appears below each article.

To access Web of Science, choose ‘Web of Knowledge’ from the A-Z list on the Library’s e-journals and databases webpage. Once you are in, click through until you reach the Web of Science search screen. The best way to find things is to start with a fairly simple search term. From the results page you will then see lots of different options on the left-hand side to refine your results. There is also the option to export citations to Endnote.