Psychology : A Guide to Reference and Information Sources

A reference guide for librarians, students, and beginning researchers. It brings together information (bibliographical data and a descriptive and evaluative annotation) on 667 selected sources in psychology, the social sciences, and related disciplines, and covers resource guides, comprehensive retrospective bibliographies, indexing tools and online databases, handbooks, dictionaries, encyclopedias, journals, biographical sources, and organizations on topics ranging from theory and research methods to parapsychology. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Baxter, psychological sciences librarian at Purdue University, has contributed a valuable addition to Libraries Unlimited's Reference Sources in the Social Sciences series. While her book is intended primarily as a bibliographic guide for undergraduate and graduate students, the author notes that researchers and librarians should find it helpful outside their areas of specialization.

More than 600 reference and information sources are grouped into four main parts: general social science reference sources, sources in other social sciences disciplines, general psychology reference sources, and special topics in psychology. This last part, by far the longest, includes sources on 24 topics including perception, intelligence, motivation, personality, consumer behavior, parapsychology, and research methods. Each of the four major parts is further divided by type of source such as bibliographies, indexes and abstracts, and dictionaries and encyclopedias. A thorough table of contents lists these divisions and subdivisions. Access is further eased by subject and author-title indexes.

The typical entry for a print source, by far the most numerous here, includes (where applicable) publication data, whether indexed, price, and LC and ISBN or ISSN numbers. Annotations of approximately 100-200 words for books are descriptive and evaluative. Print sources, with few exceptions, were published between 1970 and 1991. Nearly two dozen online databases and a single CD-ROM (PsycLit) are annotated in a separate section. There are also brief sections listing journals, organizations, and publishers.

While most of the important psychological reference sources in English are included, a few, such as the journals Behavioral and Brain Sciences and Schizophrenia Bulletin, are absent from this selective volume. On the other hand, Baxter has included several works only marginally related to psychology, such as Daniells' Business Information Sources and Frick's Library Research Guide to History, in part 2. Although some sources, such as Harvard List of Books in Psychology (described here as "woefully out of date"), are dated, Baxter does a good job of indicating where their value still lies. Recommended for the reference sections of academic and large public libraries.