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Educational Psychology

A guide to research at the Hunter Libraries for students in the Educational Psychology program.

Book or Article?

Often times, while conducting research, one comes across an article that includes a useful bibliography or list of works cited.  This page will help you locate items by working from citations listed in bibliographies or works cited.

Let's take the following three references from an article on intelligence testing:


 The first step is to determine if our citations are for articles in periodicals or if they are books. 

There are several common elements in each citation:
  • Author
  • Publication date
  • Title of work (book, article name)
Here is how they differ --

Periodical citations also include:
  • Title of publication (journal or periodical name)
  • Volume/Issue numbers
  • Range of page numbers
Book citations also include:
  • Location of publication
  • Publisher name

So with these criteria in mind, let's look at our first citation and identify the elements:

  • Author - Thomas, William B.
  • Publication date - 1984
  • Title - Black Intellectuals, Intelligence Testing in the 1930s and the Sociology of Knowledge

What else is included?  It looks like there is another title, along with a bunch of numbers.  This must be a journal article.

  • Title of publication - Teachers College Record
  • Volume/issue numbers - 85
  • Range of page numbers - 477-501

Our first citation is an article by William B. Thompson entitled "Black Intellectuals, Intelligence Testing in the 1930s and the Sociology of Knowledge" which was published in the periodical Teachers College Record in 1984, volume or issue number 85, on pages 477-501.

See if you can figure out the other two on your own.  We are going to try to locate the first article using library resources below.


Tracking it Down

Now that we know we are searching for an article in a periodical, we can begin. Working backward from a citation, start with the name of the periodical. In our example, the periodical title, or journal name is Teachers College Record. Go to the Hunter College Libraries home page and locate the Journal Title List link in the left hand navigation bar:

 

Enter the name of the journal or magazine in the search box:


 

If the journal in question is available, you will get results that look something like this:



What does it mean?

What the above screen is telling us is the location of the journal Teachers College Record.  It is very important to take note of the range of dates listed to ensure that the article you are looking for falls within the range available.  Here is what we learn from this screen.  Teachers College Record is available:

  • at Hunter College in print.  If you click on this link, it will take you into CUNY+ to the record for the publication (Teachers College Record)  so you can determine where in the library you can find it.
  • in EBSCOhost EJS.  This is an "Electronic Journal Subscription" which means we have access to the contents of the journal electronically, but it doesn't tell us the range of dates.  We'll have to come back to this.
  • from 03/01/1990 to 12/31/2006 in Academic Search Premier and Professional Development Collection.  Academic Search Premier and Professional Development Collection are two databases we subscribe to at Hunter.  Since our article is from 1984, we won't find it in either of these resources in Full Text.
  • from 04/01/1996 to 09/01/2007 in Education Full Text.  Education Full Text is yet another database we subscribe to at Hunter.  It still doesn't go back far enough to include our article from 1984. 

So what now?

Now, we explore the remaining two options - check the EJS to see if our date is included, and if not, then we look at the print holdings to see if we can lay hands on a physical copy.  Clicking on the EJS link takes us here:

Unfortunately for us, the electronic subscription only goes back to 1999.  Back to the drawing board.  Let's try the "Hunter Print Holdings" link.  First, we arrive here, where we will select the journal name from the list:

To actually locate the journal at Hunter, and to see if it is on microfilm or in print, click the "Hunter Main" link (we're almost there, I swear!):
Finally! So what does this mean??
Let's take a closer look:

It means that the "back issues" or older issues of this particular journal are available, in print, at Hunter. "BOUND" means that the back issues have been bound together in a book-like format, for ease of shelving and preservation. You will find the bound periodicals on the 5th floor of the main library, arranged alphabetically by title. Looking at the dates available, it appears as though the 1984 issue should be here, since the record states v.42(1941)-v.102:no.4(2000:Apr) is available and 1984 falls in that range. You can now go to the shelves and find this bound volume, locate the appropriate issue and pages, and make photocopies.