eBooks: APA PsycBooks

APA PsycBooks (hosted on EBSCO) provides access to over 60,000 chapters from over 4,000 peer-reviewed books in all aspects of psychology. It is regularly updated and constantly relevant. It also features important historical and out of print texts too, dating back to 1620. It is an invaluable resource for psychology students.

You can find eBooks on APA PsycBooks in a number of ways:

1. By using the "Books" option and browsing them A-Z.
2. By using the basic search from the home page.
3. By using the advanced search options.

APA PsycBooks arranges its eBooks similarly to online journals and articles. The chapters are linked individually like journal articles.

To open any chapter, click on the title of the eBook first

Select the chapter you wish to read from the table of contents

Select the "PDF Full text link" from the following information page

Note: Depending on your browser, or browser settings, the chapter will open up as a separate document, or in the browser window itself.

Use the "Show more" option in the filter options to refine your results in different ways.

You can browse eBooks by clicking the "Books" link in the top menu bar.

This will bring you to an A to Z of titles from which to select. Use the Next and Previous buttons above the list of titles to navigate up and down through the eBooks. To skip to another letter, use the A to Z links above the list of  titles.

You can also browse by subject area and description. Enter a term in the search box, and select the "Subject & Description" button and search.

Here we have searched for "Developmental Psychology" using the subject search. It has brought us six results, filtering them out from the A to Z list.

You can do a basic search in APA PsycBooks as soon as you log in from this start page. It is a good idea to ensure the "full text" box is selected before searching.

You can put in a phrase or keyword(s) into the search box, and click the search button. In this example we are searching for behaviourism.

You will be taken to a results screen. The number of results depends on what phrases or keyword(s) you used; on the screen you can do a number of things.

• Every result will have some summarised details to help you decide if it is relevant to you. You can find out more by clicking on any of the result titles.
• If you want to go to the full text, click on the PDF link underneath the result.
• You may also be offered similar keywords that you can click on for other searches.
• You can sort your results by relevance, author or date
• You can also use the filter to refine your results.

APA PsycBooks also has an advanced search option. You can use this to do more detailed searches and for searching across a number of different fields (author, title, keyword etc).

Again, it is a good idea to have full text selected. Although you can search across a number of fields, the default option is three.

In this example we are searching across fields using the keywords cognition and childhood. We are also doing an author search for Lochman. There are many other fields that can be searched too - these can be selected using the drop down menu(s).

With the advanced search, you may get fewer results depending on how detailed you were. In our example we only have one, but we have matched our author, and our keywords have been found in the abstract and in the subjects field.

This shows how advanced search is good for searching for chapters when you have some, but not all the details of an eBook, or if you want to get eBooks that cover overlapping topics.

Click on the title for more chapter and eBook information, and the PDF for the full text option. As in a basic search, you can refine searches using the filters at the side when you have more than one result.