Library Accounts
Register online for your library account or at the Circulation Desk on the main floor of the library. Rockhurst students, faculty and staff are required to use their Rockhurst email addresses in their library accounts. Library accounts expire at the end of each semester so you will need to reactivate your account next semester. This can also be done online.

You will be given a unique identification number in addition to your library account number. With this library account number and unique borrower identification number you may:

Understanding the Difference Between Scholarly Journals, Trade Journals and Popular Magazines
Criteria to determine how scholarly and trade journal articles differ from general interest magazine articles in the field can be found on the Scholarly Journal, Trade Journal or Popular Magazine? research guide.

Sources of Analysis and Discussion in Library Databases for Psychology Research topics
The following are a selection of the possible databases you could use to research a communication's topic. Start with these databases, then once you have utilized these, ask a librarian for guidance to other databases.  

Off campus access is available through the VPN proxy server provided by Computer Services. The Off Campus Access to Databases page will link you to the page provided by Computer Services. If you link directly to the library's web site outside of VPN you will not be able to use the databases.

Examples of subject specific databases:

PsycINFO [Psychological Abstracts]
Psychological Abstracts is an index published annually by the American Psychological Association that identifies thousands of scholarly books, journal articles, book chapters, and dissertations in the English-language from all areas of psychology and related disciplines. PsycINFO is the name the APA gives to the electronic version of Psychological Abstracts. Journal coverage is from 1872 to the present.

Full text of journals published by the American Psychological Association and allied organizations indexed in PsycINFO can be found in a companion database, PsycARTICLES, in EBSCOhost. Articles identified by using PsycINFO which exist in PsycARTICLES appear automatically in the PsycINFO record for the article.

Use the thesaurus in PsycINFO to first identify the correct APA subject term for your topic.

PsycARTICLES
Full text of the journals of the American Psychological Association and allied organizations from 1987 - present. All journals are indexed in PsycINFO, which is the complete version of Psychological Abstracts online.

ERIC
ERIC is a national information center designed and developed by the U.S. Office of Education and now operated by that department's Institute of Education Sciences. ERIC indexes research reports, descriptions of outstanding programs and other documents of educational significance, plus periodical literature with coverage of more than 500 major educational and education-related publications.

ERIC non-journal documents, designated with ED at the beginning of the record, are available on microfiche at the library from 1963-2003. In addition, selected non-journal documents from 1993-present are available in the public version of ERIC.

Education Full Text
Articles from English-language education periodicals and yearbooks published in the U.S. and elsewhere. Subjects include administration, teaching methods and curriculum, literacy, government funding, and more. From 1983 - present.

JSTOR
This database is an online archive of scholarly journals in a wide variety of disciplines which have been digitally reproduced to provide access to the backfile of each title. Some titles go back to the 19th century. JSTOR will not include the latest 2 - 5 years of the journals for most titles, although some publishers of journals are now providing links to some recent content.

Example of a general topic database:

Academic Search Premier
This database indexes and abstracts articles appearing in over 7300 journals in the areas of social sciences, humanities, education, computer sciences, engineering, physics, chemistry, language and linguistics, arts & literature, medical sciences, ethnic studies, and many more, some as far back 1965. Full text of articles appear from 4000 scholarly journals, including 3100 peer-reviewed titles.

Identifying Books and Journals in the Library Collection
Books owned by the library can be identified by using the Online Catalog on the library's web site. Rockhurst University is a member of the MOBIUS consortium consisting of 60 Missouri academic libraries. Books available in MOBIUS libraries can be requested by you and sent here for your use. Additional information about this is found on the Patron Initiated Borrowing Through the Online Catalog guide on the library's web site.

Journals, newspapers and magazines owned by the library can be identified by using the Periodical Holdings Catalog. Currently the library's periodical collection totals over 14,000 titles.

Both of these catalogs can be used either on or off campus.

Interlibrary Loan
Articles not found full text in the library's collection can be ordered from other libraries across the country through Interlibrary Loan. Databases in EBSCOhost have a link in each record which allows you to submit your request right from the database. Otherwise, use the forms on our Interlibrary Loan page to submit your request electronically. Books are free; articles are 20 cents per page per article. Generally you will have your materials within a week. Articles are usually delivered as a PDF attachment within a Rockhurst email.

Proper Citation of Sources
When using information from other sources, whether copyrighted or not, it is necessary to give attribution to those sources. Doing so will help you avoid plagiarism.

More information about copyright is found on the Copyright and Fair Use guide.

Information on how to avoid plagiarism is on the Avoiding Plagiarism guide.

The library provides the RefWorks bibliographic management system. This is a bibliography management program that allows Rockhurst University faculty, students and staff to set up their own online account to manage electronic citations imported from databases subscribed to by the Greenlease Library as well as input citation information from print sources. Only Rockhurst University email accounts may be used with RefWorks accounts. These citations are easily incorporated into documents created in word processing programs. Many citation formats are included.

RefWorks Account Information

Tutorial and Quick Start Guide (PDF 2.42MB)*

Connect to RefWorks

How to Export Saved Citations from a Database Into RefWorks (PDF 87KB)*

Adding References Manually to RefWorks

Additional Sources of Information in the Library Collection
In addition to the sources listed below, the library has many print sources in the Reference collection that give information on psychology and law. Most of these sources cannot be checked out, so plan time to visit the library to consult them. Many of these are listed on the Psychology Sources Research Guide available on the library web site. All guides are available on the library web site.

* PDF document which requires Adobe Acrobat Reader to view, download or print.

Updated September 2, 2008.