Welcome to Lit Search!

This is intended to help new students learn the sometimes complicated process of hunting down literature. Your skill, speed, and discrimination in finding references will greatly affect your ability to develop broad and deep knowledge of your field.

Where to Go

Psyc Info

We find most of our references in PsycInfo. It is an enormous database, with many ways to search, citations and abstracts available for all references, and quick links to the text of articles available on line (see details below). Here is the blurb from its host site (EBSCO):

"PsycINFO, from the American Psychological Association (APA), contains nearly 2.3 million citations and summaries of scholarly journal articles, book chapters, books, and dissertations, all in psychology and related disciplines, dating as far back as the 1800s. 97 percent of the covered material is peer-reviewed. Journal coverage, which spans 1887 to present, includes international material selected from more than 2,100 periodicals in more than 25 languages."

Note: Although there is some material from 1887, there isn't much - the database is only comprehensive for the last few decades.

Web of Science

Web of Science is another search interface, particularly helpful for forward searches. (Psyc Info only has reference/citation links for some articles.) WoS also has information on journals. The blurb from Thomson:

"The Web of Science provides seamless access to current and retrospective multidisciplinary information from approximately 8,700 of the most prestigious, high impact research journals in the world. Web of Science also provides a unique search method, cited reference searching. With it, users can navigate forward, backward, and through the literature, searching all disciplines and time spans to uncover all the information relevant to their research. Users can also navigate to electronic full-text journal articles."

Ref Works

This is a great online bibilographic manager, available free of charge to UVA students. (Other, software-based managers available to purchase include End Notes.) Ref Works allows you to keep track of all your readings, take notes, and tag references belonging to a certain project or paper. It works automatically with Psyc Info, so you can import references without typing, and with Microsoft Word, so you can generate footnotes and bibliographies without typing. Their tutorial & help sections are thorough, but this brief primer will get you started. Here is the blurb from their website:

"RefWorks -- an online research management, writing and collaboration tool -- is designed to help researchers easily gather, manage, store and share all types of information, as well as generate citations and bibliographies.

If you need to manage information for any reason -- whether it be for writing, research or collaboration -- Ref Works is the perfect tool. Use the tutorials and information resources on this site to work smarter with Ref Works!"

The Library

Yes, sadly, not all references are available online. If the handy link in Psyc Info doesn't work, you'll have to do more hunting. First try VIRGO, the online catalog. Type in the journal name, use the "journal title" search button, and look for a URL in the entry. That will take you to a list of online issues, where you can either browse to find the one you need, or discover that our subscription doesn't cover the online version. In the latter case, you'll actually have to walk over to the physical library listed in the journal entry. Be sure to get the journal's call number off VIRGO.

Take this map, and have fun exploring the UVA campus. (Most of our references will actually be housed either in BioPsych - in Gilmer, or Brown - near Gilmer. Lucky you.) Once at the library, use the journal's call number from VIRGO, and the volume/issue/page numbers from your citation, to find the article. Journals can't be checked out, but there are xerox machines in the libraries (so load up your Cavalier Advantage card in advance). If you have any problems, ask the librarians. They don't bite. (In fact, Sandi Dulaney, at Bio Psych, is very helpful.)

Types of Searches

Note: No matter what type of search you use, be sure to keep a log where you record what you searched (which keywords, etc.). Next time you sit down to work on that project, you won't go in circles.

Citation: Backwards

Here you track down the entire reference list of an article. If you can get someone to suggest a good article in a field to you, this is a more productive place to start than trolling through keywords on PsycInfo. (You can always work off a paper/pdf version of the original article, but for a speedier search with recently published work, try an online version with links - either the PsycInfo citation or the article's online text itself - to click your way to the referenced works.)

Citation: Forwards

In this search, you choose an important article in the area, and then find out who has cited it. Web of Science is the best place for this (and you can even sign up to receive email alerts when newly published articles cite it). PsycInfo has also started to provide this information for recently published work.

Author/Keyword

In PsycInfo, you can search by any article feature, including author and keyword. Note that both of these are tricky. Author may not actually pick up all of a researcher's work, if their initials are different on different articles (e.g., John Smith vs. John K. Smith - take note and use a consistent form yourself on your publications!) or if there are any misspellings (yes, that happens). Keyword is notoriously difficult. You may find very little under one concept name, only to discover a whole other literature uses a slightly different term for the same concept. In any case, be prepared for a lengthy search, and don't use these options exclusively (always use forward and backward searchers also).