Psychological Abstracts contains nonevaluative summaries of the serial and book literature in psychology and related disciplines. Each monthly issue includes an author index, a brief subject index, and a book title index. Expanded and integrated annual author and subject indexes are published at the end of each volume.
You can search Psychological Abstracts by author or subject. To search by author in the current year, use the author index in the back of each monthly issue. Up to four authors are included for each entry. The index in each issue will give you record numbers for entries contained in the same issue.
To search by author in previous years, go to the appropriate author index for each year. For example, if you are searching for 1997 articles by Mabel L. Rice, you will find two entries. The first one directs you to record 16212. Look on the spine for the appropriate range of entry numbers. In this instance, you will find record 16212 in the May volume which covers records 14178-17532. The second author index entry for Mabel L. Rice directs you to the first author, Patricia L. Cleave, for the full citation. You can also go directly to the abstract since the record number (39337) is provided. Starting in 1998, the annual author index references only the abstract number in which the author appears, as it does in the monthly issue. The detailed bibliographic reference has been eliminated.
To search by subject in the current year, begin with the Brief Subject Index in each of the monthly issues for the year. This index is located in the back of each issue. Subject terms used in the index are taken from the Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms and only those terms which represent subjects covered in the monthly issue are listed. The main concepts of a document are called major terms; concepts of secondary importance within a document are called minor terms. Up to five major terms for each document are printed in the Brief Subject Index; no minor terms are printed. Each subject term is arranged by serials, book chapters, and/or books. Once you have determined the appropriate subject term(s), use the index to locate records which will be contained in the same issue.
To search by subject in a previous year, look in the cumulated Subject Index for the subject term which represents your area of interest. Alphabetically arranged index phrases are listed below each subject term; each phrase is intended as a concise representation of the contents of a book, book chapter, or article. Once you have made a selection, go to the monthly issue which includes the relevant record number. For example, if you are interested in 1997 literature about the subject term "Ability Level" and have decided that the article described as "age & skill level & cue-target interval, spatial orientation of covert visual attention, 12 vs 15 yr old hockey players vs adults" is relevant, then you would look for record 22002. You will find this number in volume 84, number 7 (July 1997) on page 2904.
Book entries contain the following elements in order:
Book chapter entries contain the following elements in order:
Journal article entries contain the following elements in order:
Psychological Abstracts is located on Table 27 in the Indexes area of the library.
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