14 Cows for America
Yesterday on American Public Radio’s The Story, Kimeli Naiyomah told the story of his life in Masailand and the gift of 14 cows that the Masai people honored America with to comfort us after 9/11.
A New Job for Merrie
I’d like to tell you how much I’ve enjoyed working with you over the past 4 ½ years. Not only have I learned a huge amount about each of your disciplines, but I’ve been able to see several students grow and learn as well. Nothing could be more exciting or enriching.
However, I am leaving UF and have accepted a position as a psychology and education librarian at the University of St. Thomas, the Minneapolis campus. I’m thrilled to get back to *cold* weather and away from the 8 months of summer we have 
Get a Job You Love
At the moment, I don’t know who will be taking responsibility for my assignments, i.e. who your new librarian will be, but as soon as I know, I’ll let you know.
My last day will be Thursday, September 3, 2009. Have a great life at UF!
Impact Factors, Journal Citation Reports
Impact factors are used by faculty to decide where to publish, by tenure and promotion committees to decide if faculty have published in important journals, and by librarians to decide which journals must be kept and which may be cut during hard times. The impact factor of a journal is supposed to tell us how often articles in it are cited, which is supposed to indicate how intensely and widely read the journal is. (The impact factor is calculated by looking at the number of articles cited this year/the number of “citeable items” that were published in the previous 2 years.)
However, librarians have discussed problems with the impact factor during the past several years. Depending on the field of study, citation patterns aren’t well captured by impact factors and journals with review articles are much more highly rated than journals that only include research articles.
A good article is at Wired: http://www.wired.com/culture/geekipedia/magazine/17-06/mf_impactfactor
Other articles:
(2009). Is Impact Factor True Evaluation for Ranking Quality Measure?. DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology, 29(3), 55-8. Retrieved 27 July 2009, from Library Lit & Inf Full Text database.
More articles from Library, Information Science and Technology Abstracts
PsycBooks Online — Find them in our Catalog
Great news! Gerald Langford, one of our catalogers, has downloaded all of the PsycBooks records into our catalog. So now while you’re searching for print books in our library, you can find over 1,600 electronic book available to you, whereever you are, anywhere in the world.
We continually receive new books, so keep checking back to see what we have. And you can read whole chapters at once, download the entire chapter, and enjoy reading in the comfort of your bed (if you tend to leave your laptop in your living room
Gerald suggests you browse the books this way:
There are 1682 records. If you do a keyword “Anywhere” search for “American Psychological Association,” then choose the 1800 available “online,” then limit by “New Titles,” you get a result of 1684 records. Hopefully all but 2 of those are the PsycBooks record.
Surprising sources: www.PBS.org
Guest Blogger: Becca Tanner.
Sometimes, the hardest part of research is knowing where to start. There is a tremendous amount of information out there, and nowhere near enough time to find it all. However, there are some incredible sources of information that tend to be overlooked. These sources are often excellent places to start in the research process–you may have a general idea of what you are interested in, but don’t know much about the subject itself. The Surprising Sources series will introduce you to the sources (primarily online) that you may never have considered as a starting point. Spending some time checking out these sites will often not only help you come up with a research question, but provide other sources to go to for more specific information. They are valuable assets for understanding the context and background of what you are interested in.
Frontiline on PBS
One incredibly rich source of information is . Yes, the land of Nova, Sesame Street and costume dramas also has excellent resources for those of us in the social sciences. For instance, the documentary series Frontline produced the show “The Persuaders” (2004), a documentary that deals with marketing and advertising. It provides not only a detailed look how goods and ideas are sold to us, but also at the impact that marketing has, both on consumers and society as a whole. It is a good introduction to both the sociological and psychological impacts of marketing. Luckily for us, PBS provides more than just the documentary. In addition to the show, there are additional web features that discuss neuroscience in marketing, as well as an examination of how a brand is created, and interviews and discussions with those involved with the show. Even better is the links/reading section, which takes you to even more sources–from organizations that deal with privacy concerns, to advertising trade magazines, to tools that allow you to identify different types of consumers in your area. PBS hooks you up with the good, the bad and the ugly of marketing, and just about any other topic you are interested in. Let’s say that after watching “The Persuaders”, and browsing through the extra information, you have discovered a topic to look into further–how psychology has informed and changed the nature of political advertising. From the Frontline link page for the Persuaders, you can go to The Living Room Candidate, which has archives of political ads dating back to Eisenhower (1952, for those of us too young to remember), with links to analysis and information on nearly everything you could think of relating to political advertising. Incidentally, the Living Room Candidate website also provides a link back to a 1998 PBS program, ““The :30 Second Candidate” which provides further information about how politicians are “sold” during a campaign and provides its own list of resources to help you in your research.
Added by Merrie:
Where would you go from here? We have several databases that are relevant to the marketplace and advertising. Communication Mass Media Complete, Business Source Premier, and PsycNET will all lead you to more scholarly sources.
Other articles from this blog on PBS: The Criminalization of Mental Illness and African American Newspapers
PBS offers this sort of indepth additional material for nearly all the programs on their website, and it they offer a variety of links to other resources to continue your research. You will be amazed at what you find. So next time you need ideas or more information about a subject, visit PBS to find out what they have.
APA and Psychologists’ Involvement with Torture
You might have heard that psychologists were involved in the torture or “enhanced interrogations” conducted by the Bush administration. Psychologists suggested that their involvement developing methods hastened responses from prisoners and lessened the need for physical torture. To me this just means that the psychological torture was probably more painful than physical torture might have been.
The American Psychological Association has been criticized by its own members for not responding more quickly to the actions of these psychologists. A timeline linking to APA’s responses during the entire discussion is here. They just released a letter to its members stating that participation in torture is unethical for psychologists. Some people are still disappointed that APA isn’t suggesting or imposing sanctions against the psychologists who participated.
Andrew Sullivan The Daily Dish: The Latest from the APA On Torture. The Atlantic June 18, 2009
(Thanks to Monica Bigler for apprising me of the above article and letter.)
Social Theory: Trial Database
Social Theory is a new trial database that will be available to us to play with and evaluate until August 4, 2009 from Alexander Street . It’s been around for a few years, but recently quite a bit of new content has been added.
http://soth.alexanderstreet.com
Alexander Street Press says that
“The latest release features 32,500 pages of new material, bringing the collection to more than 122,000 pages from 346 works by 100 authors.
Highlights include 33 volumes of the Complete Works of Marx & Engels and nearly 26,000 pages of German language content. Other featured authors in this release include Lewis Coser, Dorothy Smith, Theodor Adorno, Niklas Luhmann, and Jurgen Habermas.
Social Theory brings together an extensive range of influential writings representing the most important trends of sociological thought from the eighteenth century to the present day. Each document is carefully indexed to promote highly targeted full-text searching that can stimulate fresh insights into even the most familiar texts. When complete, the database will grow to more than 150,000 pages of full-text material.”
Because of funding issues, I’m not sure how likely it is that we could purchase or subscribe to Social Theory, but I’d definitely like to know your views on the database. If you love it, there’s hope.
I’m also hoping that this database can help translate some of the more difficult theorists and make all of their works easily available to our community.
Learn How to Mine APA’s PsycINFO
Want to learn how to use all the great features of APA’s PsycINFO? APA has free webinars that teach you how to wander through their databases and find the exact articles you want on the exact topic you’re interested in.
We subscribe to PsycINFO on 2 different interfaces — APA’s own, called PsycNET and EbscoHOST. Personally, I find PsycNET easier to navigate and it provides direct links to publisher websites which we often subscribe to directly. But they include the same data about the publications.
Go to APA’s website to find dates and links to the webinars. Make sure you watch the webinar about the interface you prefer, PsycNET or EbscoHOST. Navigating and using search features are very different depending on which you use.
And I’m always here to help if you need anything!
Language & Lingustics Compass
For many years, various social sciences and sciences have “Annual Yearbooks:” including broad overview articles, written by current authoritative researchers. These have been extremely helpful for teaching new areas of study, learning new areas of study, and finding reference sources.
Now, Wiley- has published an online journal, Compass, that provides broad, overarching articles on issues in Linguistics. Often articles in disciplines like Psychology or LInguistics report about very narrow issues or experiments. Compass make it possible to place the report into a larger questions and theory.
Here are some wonderful new papers in compass.
Yay! student protests saved ICB and LGBT programs
After protests by students, Patricia Telles–Irvin, UF’s vice president of Student Affairs, stated that ICB and LGBT programs will be retained. Good work!