PsychInfo (unix interface - much nicer, actually).
here's how you get into PsychInfo on the Unix system:
log into your psych account
at the unix prompt type "telnet forsythetn" (no quotes)
you'll get a prompt that says "Account?" type in "folio"
it'll ask for your name or student ID (this part is obvious)
it'll also ask for your PIN - this is the 5 or 6 digit number that
you also need to get into axess
now you're in! to select PsychInfo, type "sel ps"
if you just type "select" it'll give you a whole list of databases
to search.
searching: once you're in PsychInfo, you can search using all kinds
of criteria
(type "find" to get a list of all of them). some examples:
"find a boroditsky" will find all articles authored (a is for
author) by someone
whose name is boroditsky (it doesn't discriminate between first and last
names) - this kind of search is not a good idea if you're looking for a
paper by Smith
"find s divers memory" will find all articles whose subject
(s is for subject) includes divers and memory
"find t fundamental attribution error" will find all articles whose title (t is
for title) includes the words "fundamental attribution error"
suppose you type in "find s stereotype" and get thousands of hits.
to narrow down the search you can add another restriction. for example,
typing "and s threat" will find all the citations whose subject includes both
stereotype and threat.
in addition to the "and" command and the "or" command there is also the
"not" command which excludes things from a search. Suppose you were
interested in "transitivity". Transitivity has both a
mathematical sense and a grammatical sense. If you were only interested
in the mathematical sense, you could
type "find s transitive not grammar" to only get the nerdy math-psych
citations.
brief and full citations: once you've gotten a list of hits, you can
see the full citations by typing "df N" (where N is the number of the
citation you want). if you want to see all the citations in full format
just type "df" without a number
printing and emailing the results: when you get a list of results,
you can mail them to yourself or print them directly to holly (or to
other networked printers on campus) . some examples:
"mail all full to lera@psych" will send all the citations from the
current search in full format (including abstracts) to my account.
"mail 1,3-5 to lera@psych" will send citations 1,3,4, and 5 to my
account in brief format (because i didn't specify "full")
"print 1-4 full to holly" will send citations 1,2,3, and 4 from the
current search in full format (including abstracts) to holly.
Another thing I like in folio is the OED (type "sel oed")
If you don't need the full etymology of a word, but just a simple
definition, log into your psych account and use the "webster" command. for
example typing in "webster sesquipedalian" at the unix prompt will give
a definition for the word "sesquipedalian"