Megasites and Library Resources

A number of online and computer-based resources span a very wide terrain in psychology, covering numerous subdisciplines. This chapter includes the online "megasites" for psychology, the smaller but general online resources, the Web sites for psychology-related organizations, and the general library resources and databases. It also includes clearinghouses for psychology-related information, giant software collections, broad-based electronic journals, and some of the online magazines whose content spans several psychological disciplines.
Finding just the right book, article, software, or other resource can still be a struggle, even with CD-ROM databases and an enormous variety of online places to check. In fact, that is the main problem. Librarians know the value of electronic tools, perhaps more than anyone. However, there are few generally accepted standards for interfaces, searching commands, citation styles, or platform requirements. The entries in this chapter are especially important because many of them will help you find other resources that you need. Finding just the right book, article, software, or other resource can still be a struggle, even with CD-ROM databases and an enormous variety of online places to check. In fact, that is the main problem. Librarians know the value of electronic tools, perhaps more than anyone. However, there are few generally accepted standards for interfaces, searching commands, citation styles, or platform requirements.
Consider, for example, the book. This type of resource has been around for thousands of years and there has been ample time for commonly accepted standards to develop. Librarians agree on how to catalog them so people can understand what is in the book, when it was published, who wrote it, and where to obtain a copy. When you pick up a book, you expect to find certain common features. For a nonfiction book, for example, you'll find a title page, a copyright notice in standard format, a table of contents, an ISBN, and an index. You expect the pages to be numbered, and with a few exceptions, you can expect to turn pages from right to left.
These fundamental standards haven't yet evolved for electronic resources, though the general adoption of the Uniform Resource Locator standard for resources on Internet is a good start. If someone hands you a diskette, though, there is no standard way to access and use the material on it. You might have to decompress a file, access it through some other program, or type a:setup at the computer prompt. If you can get the program started, you have few guidelines about how to actually use it. It might have a menu somewhere on the opening screen, or it might expect you to already know commands to start working with the program. You might use the mouse or keyboard, and pressing the escape key could do any number of unpredictable things. Even accessing "help" is nonstandard. You might need a function key, the question mark, the letter H, or a mouse click.
The power of electronic library resources is so enormous, though, that the information-literate person can't ignore them and wouldn't want to. These resources are so important that people will put up with even the most cumbersome and idiosyncratic interfaces. The PsycINFO collection of databases, for example, is arguably the single most important electronic library resource in psychology, and its value as a searching tool is unsurpassed – provided you spend some time learning how to use it.


American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
http://www.aaas.org/

The Web site of AAAS offers the full-text of some its articles and access to various scientific databases and other Web sites. AAAS has a service for posting news about research findings to establish a streamlined means of communicating this information to science reporters and the public. The service is at http://www.eurekalert.org and instructions are available online.


American Psychological Society
http://psych.hanover.edu/APS/

gopher://gopher.hanover.edu/Public/APS/
gopher to: gopher.hanover.edu
Choose Public directory, then APS subdirectory.Choose Public directory, then APS subdirectory.

The American Psychological Society maintains a gopher site housed at Hanover College, which includes links to databases for research funding, electronic journals, lists of discussion groups, and a software archive. The society was founded in 1988 and is dedicated to the advancement of psychological science and the giving away of psychology in the public interest.


Announcement of Psychology Conferences
sci.psychology.announce

This moderated newsgroup accepts and posts announcements from organizations about conferences, workshops, internships, new journals, and other notable events and resources.


Annual Reviews
http://www.annurev.org/

Annual Reviews publishes several important series for a number of disciplines, several of which are very useful to psychology students (e.g., Annual Review of Psychology, Annual Review of Neuroscience, Annual Review of Sociology) These books are useful resources for psychology students and professionals wishing to obtain an overall review of research in a particular subfield. This Web site allows you to search the back titles for relevant articles, and they are beginning to create a database that will also include abstracts.


APA's PsychNet
http://www.apa.org/

The home Web site of the American Psychological Association is a true megasite, and it is a good place to start Web surfing for psychology students and professionals alike. The site is carefully and professionally written, organized and maintained, and offers an enormous array of resources for anyone interested in the serious study of psychology. Services offered include documents on psychology for the general public; legislative news about psychology; information about undergraduate and graduate education in psychology; listings and descriptions of APA's books, journals, and conferences; information about the 50 divisions and state affiliated associations; and information about how to become a full or associate member of the APA. The site also includes selected articles and the classified position announcement ads that appear in the APA Monitor, the monthly newspaper of the APA. Of particular interest to students are the sections announcing special opportunities and awards, such as the Summer Science Institute.
PsychNet offers topical and timely material on current events related to psychology. After the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, for example, the site offered a brochure on helping children cope and a list of state psychological associations to help people find referrals to mental health professionals. If you become a regular visitor to PsychNet, you might want to take advantage of their URL-Minder service through which you will receive e-mail whenever the site is updated. Fortunately, the site is searchable by keyword – a very useful feature in a site so large.


The Atlantic Monthly
http://www.theatlantic.com/

The Atlantic Monthly provides access to an electronic version of their respected magazine at this Web site with occasional articles related to psychology.


Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) Target Article Reprints
http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs.html

Published by Cambridge University Press, the interdisciplinary BBS offers articles in psychology, neurosciences, behavioral biology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, linguistics, and philosophy along with peer commentaries on each of the articles.


Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science
http://www.cycor.ca/Psych/cjbs/vol27-1.html

An important initiative of the Canadian Psychological Association is called Project Accolade, which is moving the contents of this journal to the electronic medium, available through the Web. The site includes full-text articles of recent issues.


Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology
http://www.cycor.ca/Psych/Psynopsis/science.html

Table of contents and abstracts are available for recent issues.


Canadian Psychology
http://www.cycor.ca/Psych/Psynopsis/scholar.html

Table of contents and abstracts are available for recent issues.


Contemporary Applied Psychology in Spain (Psicologia Aplicada Contemporanea en España)
http://www.ucm.es/OTROS/Psyap/hispania/

Table of contents only.


CYBER-SYNAPSE by Warren Bush
http://rdz.stjohns.edu/~warren/psych.html

Warren Bush at St. John's University compiled this list of psychology resources on the Web. The site is basically a list of hyperlinks organized by type of resource, such as sites dealing with psychology-related organizations and societies, sites created by university psychology departments, library sites, electronic journals and magazines, and psychology-related mailing lists and newsgroups.


Discussions on Psychology
alt.psychology

This unmoderated newsgroup in the alt top-level category is an open-ended discussion of topics from serial killers to scientology. Participants digress, lose their tempers, fire off sarcastic comments, and occasionally engage in some meaningful conversation. The newsgroup has many cross-postings.


ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center)
http://www.aspensys.com/eric/
(The ERIC database is also available on CD-ROM and via some online services such as OCLC and Knowledge Index on CompuServe).

Supported by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, and the National Library of Education, ERIC is an excellent resource for students, educators, and educational psychologists. The ERIC database includes over 850,000 abstracts of documents and articles on educational research from around the world and is also available on CD-ROM from a number of publishers such as EBSCO, Knight Ridder, and Silver Platter Information, Inc. When you find the material you need, the full text of the article can be purchased from the ERIC Document Reproduction Service. ERIC also offers the ERIC Digests, two-page research summaries written by experts in the field on specific topics, which are searchable by keywords and very popular with students and researchers. ERIC's home page has links to its other sponsored activities, such as the National Parent Information Network and the National Library of Education.
The work for creating the ERIC database is done in subject-specific clearinghouses, which collect, abstract, and index the materials in specific subject areas. Several clearinghouses deal with psychology-related materials, such as the following:

Eric Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation
http://www.aspensys.com/eric/

Housed at Catholic University of America, this site includes information about the clearinghouse and a wealth of other services as well. Access to the digests, to the ERIC database, and to related services is available.

Eric Clearinghouse on Counseling and Student Services
http://www.aspensys.com/eric/

This clearinghouse began at the University of Michigan but is now located at University of North Carolina at Greensboro in the School of Education. The UNCG Web site has a counselor and therapist support system under construction.
This Clearinghouse combines with the Council for Exceptional Children in Reston, Virginia, and offers a gopher site with a variety of resource listings in the subject. The digests are listed in the gopher menu by subject area.

ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education
http://ericps.ed.uiuc.edu/ericeece.html

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is the home of this clearinghouse for ERIC, which deals with social, cognitive, emotional, and educational issues of childhood.

ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics
http://ericir.syr.edu/ericcll/

Operated by the Center for Applied Linguistics, a private nonprofit organization, this clearinghouse focuses on languages and language education, English as a second language, bilingualism, intercultural communication and cultural education, and study abroad programs. The Center is also the home of the clearinghouse for ESL Literacy Education.

ERIC Clearinghouse for Social Studies/Social Science Education
http://www.indiana.edu/~ssdc/eric-chess.html

Located at Indiana University, this clearinghouse deals with the educational literature in the social studies. Adjunct clearinghouses on law-related education and United States-Japan studies are also housed here.


Family Studies Database
National Information Services Corporation
Wyman Towers
3100 St. Paul St.
Baltimore, MD 21218
(410) 243-0797

A database of over 135,000 bibliographic entries and abstracts on social science research on domestic violence, family law, work and gender issues, and sexual behavior. ($595; educational discounts available.)


iec ProGAMMA
http://www.gamma.rug.nl/gamma.html

The "iec" stands for Interuniversity Expertise Center, and ProGAMMA's goal is to stimulate the development and distribution of innovative software related to the social and behavioral sciences. The center provides assistance and advice in software development, publishes newsletters and brochures, and organizes international conferences called Social Science Information Technology. The center is supported by the Dutch government and several universities in northern Europe. One very valuable service offered through iec ProGAMMA is SIByl, listed later in this chapter.


General Discussion of Psychology
sci.psychology.misc

This open newsgroup is extremely active and, partly because it is not moderated, includes a grab-bag of postings that range from the sublime to the ridiculous. The free-wheeling, sometimes acerbic conversation is informal and many psychology students share their experiences and queries in this forum. It also includes announcements of various kinds, from new Web sites to alternative therapies, as well as the ever-present cross-postings.


GlobalPsych Institute
http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/projects/gpp/index.html
Mirror site in the U.S.:
http://rdz.stjohns.edu/gp/index.html

The GlobalPsych Institute, which incorporates the InterPsych family of mailing lists, is an international confederation of organizations for health, behavior, cognition, and education. The span of interests is wide, and they invite professionals to join them in developing Web resources, new mailing lists, electronic journals, and new projects. Ian Pitchford, founder of InterPsych, is the coordinator and the questions he proposes as priorities for the Institute are not easy ones. They begin with "What is human nature?"


HyperDOC
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/
or
gopher://gopher.nlm.nih.gov/

The U.S. National Library of Medicine's home Web site is a treasure trove of book catalogs, databases, brochures, lists of events, descriptions of health-related funding initiatives, and many other resources. It contains information and instructions on how to obtain and account to access the databases maintained by the library, the most important of which is MEDLINE, which has over 7 million citations. The library also offers access to a number of free databases, such as Clinical Alerts (early release of clinical information from National Institutes of Health); AIDS-related databases; HSTAT (full text of clinical practice guidelines); and the NLM Locator (an online catalog of the library's holdings). HyperDOC offers access to some innovative multimedia exhibits, such as the Visible Human Project, and some exhibitions featuring images of medicine in art and history.


International Journal of Human-Computer Studies
http://ksi.cpsc.ucalgary.ca:80/IJHCS/

The site includes links to an ftp site at which abstracts of journal issues are maintained.


The Internet Public Library
http://ipl.sils.umich.edu/

The School of Library and Information Sciences at the University of Michigan sponsors a prototype electronic public library on the Internet, with a reference desk, youth services, a section on education, and services for librarians and information professionals. Look under Reference, then Science, to find psychology materials and links. Psychology resources are not extensive but the project demonstrates how regular library services can be provided on Internet.


Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis
http://www.envmed.rochester.edu/wwwrap/behavior/jaba/jabahome.htm

Includes a searchable database of tables of contents of current and previous issues, with abstracts. The site also offers hypertext reprints of complete articles from the journal. Follow the links to reach the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, with the same kind of functionality at the Web site.


Journal of Mind and Behavior
http://kramer.ume.maine.edu/~jmb/

The journal focuses on interdisciplinary approaches to psychology and related fields, with articles exploring consciousness, the mind/body problem, methodological issues, social philosophy, and related areas. The Web site includes abstracts.


Library of Congress
http://lcweb.loc.gov/

Library of Congress MARVEL
gopher://marvel.loc.gov/

LOCIS
telnet://locis.loc.gov/

The Library of Congress offers an enormous range of resources to scholars, professionals, librarians, students, and anyone looking for books, videos, films, copyright information, information about legislation, digital collections, exhibits, and government activities. The LOCIS site maintains a vast catalog of all the books in the Library, a resource so valuable that it will be well worth your while to struggle through the cumbersome interface. You can't check out any books, of course, but you will find out what materials have been published on your topic, including the most obscure. The site also includes a database of legislative activities and one on copyrights. Some of the Library's materials can also be accessed via anonymous ftp to ftp.loc.gov.


Nature
http://www.nature.com/
Mirror site in the U.S.:
http://www.america.nature.com/

Summaries of articles in recent editions of Nature are included; the site also has position vacancy announcements. The first site listed is in the United Kingdom, the second in the United States. Connect to whichever is closest to you.


New England Journal of Medicine On-line
http://www.nejm.org/

The online version of this widely respected weekly medical journal includes the full text of many of the features and columns and the partial text of others. Abstracts of the original articles are also available online, and you can order the full article if you choose. Visitors can examine the most recent edition or search the archives by article type.


Online Computer Library Center, Inc.
(OCLC)
(800) 848-5878
http://ww.oclc.org/

This organization is far more familiar to librarians than to students. They offer computer-based products and services to libraries and educational institutions around the world, including online and CD-ROM services for cataloging, collection development, interlibrary loan, and reference materials. Examples of some of their products include the Online Union Catalog, which is an enormous bibliographic database used by libraries for cataloging purposes and FirstSearch, which is an online reference service that enables access to dozens of databases for library staff and patrons. A newer service is Electronic Journals Online (EJO), which provides access to the full text of some peer-reviewed research journals (none in psychology, yet). OCLC is at the forefront of efforts to provide tools for electronic scholarship.


Psychguide
http://www.designers-int.com/Psychguide/

This Web site has a full set of menu items including links to universities, software sources, newsgroups, mailing lists, job opportunities, electronic journals, and a discussion forum. However, it doesn't (yet) have much content inside. The site accepts commercial advertisements, such as one offering telephone counseling at $1 per minute with a licensed independent clinical social worker (minimum charge, $15).


Psychiatry On-Line
http://www.cityscape.co.uk/users/ad88/psych.htm
Mirror site in the U.S.:
http://www.priory.com/journals/psych.htm

This journal boasts that it is the first electronic medical journal fully available online. Psychiatrists, and those interested in psychiatry, are the primary audience, and submissions are refereed. Some accompanying services offered by the publisher are available only by paid subscription.


PsycINFO
http://www.apa.org/

PsycLIT CD-ROM

PSYCINFO Send e-mail to:
MAJORDOMO@WWW.APA.ORG
Put in the body of the message:
SUBSCRIBE PSYCINFO

PsycINFO is the department at the American Psychological Association responsible for some of the most important research tools for psychologists and psychology students. It publishes the well-known Psychological Abstracts, which, since 1927, has been providing bibliographic references and abstracts to articles in all the major (and many of the minor) psychology journals of the world. Articles are screened to ensure they meet the criterion of psychological relevance. PsycINFO began developing computerized bibliographies in the 1960s. Although only the Abstracts can claim to span the literature since the early part of this century, the electronic versions are far easier to search. It is so much faster and more productive to conduct a computerized search that few psychology-buffs who know how to use the electronic products mind that the databases do not contain entries for the very early literature. The main electronic products offered by the APA include the comprehensive PsycINFO database, PsycLIT CD-ROM database, and ClinPSYC CD-ROM database.
The PsycINFO database is the computerized mother lode, with entries going back to the 1960s and more than 4,000 new references added each month. Each PsycINFO reference includes the bibliographic citation and publishing information, a summary or abstract of the content, and standardized keyword indexing that helps researchers find the article. You can search PsycINFO by specifically referencing any of a number of fields, such as publication year, journal name, keyword, author, or any string of text that appears anywhere in the record. You can use wildcards in your searches, so that a search of wom?n will bring up articles with the word woman or women.
The APA offers many routes by which psychologists and psychology students can access the comprehensive version of PsycINFO online or its smaller and less comprehensive derivatives. PsycINFO itself can be accessed through various commercial online services such as CompuServe, DIALOG, DataStar, OCLC EPIC, and Ovid Online (see APA's PsychNet Web site for details).
Many universities have developed leasing agreements with APA so that students and faculty can use the whole database or smaller subsets. PsycFirst, for example, which includes references from the most recent three years, can be accessed through the FirstSearch system from Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), if your institution has made arrangements. Before contacting any of the commercial online services to gain access to PsycINFO or its subsets, check with your reference librarian to see if they have one of these institutional leases.
PsycINFO also produces CD-ROMs that are purchased by libraries all over the world and either placed on their networks or checked out to students to use inside the library. These contain subsets of the PsycINFO database. PsycLIT on CD-ROM covers journal articles from 1974 to the present.
A relatively new addition to the PsycINFO family of products is a Majordomo mailing list called, not surprisingly, PsycINFO. The list is designed to provide a forum for discussing effective search strategies, new products, and other specific issues related to the PsycINFO databases.


Psychology Around the World
http://sage.und.nodak.edu/org/jBAT/psychres.html

Deep in the burrows of Joseph Plaud's home Web site is Psychology Around the World, a list of Internet links to a great many relevant sites. Plaud, who is in the Department of Psychology at the University of North Dakota, is heavily involved in several psychology-related resources on the Internet, including a number of mailing lists that deal with clinical psychology and behavior analysis such as CLINIPSY and BEHAV-AN. The URL listed will take you right to his preferred Internet links. Go to his home page to find out his other interests.


The Psychology PrePrint Bulletin Board
http://www.ccsnet.com/prep/

George Hammond, a theoretical physicist who works in the field of psychology, developed this preprint service so that psychologists could put manuscripts, research notes, drafts, papers that are not yet accepted for publication, or papers that were rejected in some location where other researchers could see them quickly, without the usual long delay associated with journal publication schedules. These "PREP" boards exist for many other disciplines such as high energy physics, mathematics, and chemistry. Authors can submit their work in ASCII format and send photocopies of illustrations so they can be scanned for the Web page. The service is free, but it is a newer one and has only a few papers.


Psychology Related Periodicals
http://psych.hanover.edu/Krantz/journal.html

A list of links to psychology journals with an online presence is maintained on this site. The list includes a brief comment about what is actually available. For most journals, only the table of contents is actually online. You'll have to go to the library to see the whole article.


PSYCOLOQUY
http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/psyc.html

PSYCOLOQUY
Send e-mail to:
LISTSERV@PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU
Put in the body of the message:
SUBSCRIBE PSYC Yourname

(Mirrored in: sci.psychology.journals.psycoloquy)

PSYCOLOQUY is a refereed electronic journal, sponsored by the American Psychological Association on an experimental basis. There is no hard copy version. It publishes articles, brief reports, book reviews, and commentary in almost all areas of psychology. A chief goal, one that is very well served by its medium, is to distribute ideas and findings quickly so the researcher can obtain immediate feedback from colleagues around the world.
You can access this journal in a number of different ways. It is available at the Web site listed above, and also on USENET as a moderated newsgroup (sci.psychology.journals.psycoloquy). Finally, you can subscribe to it so it will be delivered to your e-mail address in the same way you subscribe to mailing lists.


Psyc Site
http://www.unipissing.ca/psyc/psycsite.htm

Ken Stange of the University of Nipissing in Ontario, Canada, developed a site that emphasizes links to scientific resources in psychology. It has links to other Web sites sorted by subject, a listing of mailing lists and news groups, links to sources to download software, and other resource pointers. They have a number of psychologists who have volunteered to answer e-mail questions for people who have hit dead ends in their research on particular questions. Volunteers to be experts are solicited.


Research and Discussion About Mistakes
alt.psychology.mistake-theory

Apparently few mistakes are made in psychology, or if they are, they aren't posted to this forum. The unmoderated newsgroup generally only contains the innumerable, irrelevant cross-postings from other psychology-related newsgroups. It's a relatively new addition, though, so perhaps some intriguing material will turn up.


Research Issues in Psychology
sci.psychology.research
http://www.coil.com/~grohol/psychart.htm

This high quality research-oriented newsgroup is moderated and postings may take three days for review before they appear. Messages tend to be longer and academic, focusing on general research issues and announcements of new journals or related Web sites. Some articles use APA citation style. Many participants are academic psychologists in university settings, and the topics might include research on the Internet, APA publication style, or research methodologies in specific disciplines. The guidelines for participation are posted weekly and also available at the Web site mentioned. Not surprisingly, the number of postings to this group is far less than to most of the other psychology-related newsgroups, but the quality is higher and the group is mercifully relieved from the endless, redundant cross-postings.


ShrinkTank BBS
(408) 257-8131
http://www.shrinktank.com/

The original bulletin board was started in 1983 on a Commodore 64 computer and run by Rob Bischoff. The BBS and its companion Web site feature psychology and mental health software, most of which is shareware. The Web site includes links to some psychology-related resources on Internet. This BBS is included here rather than chapter 7 because its resources are accessible on the Web.


SIByl: The Social Science Software Databank
http://www.gamma.rug.nl/sibhome.html

SIByl is the Software Information Bank of iec ProGAMMA, and it contains detailed descriptions of computer applications used in the social and behavioral sciences, including purchasing information and reviews, if any are available. The collection is searchable by means of the SIByl Search Tool, which allows indexed or full-text searching. Software authors and publishers can submit information about their products to the SIByl database online. Many of the products listed in the SIByl database are research-oriented and quite expensive, but the collection also includes some software under $100. With its European base, the list initially had few entries from North American publishers, but these are growing rapidly. Demos of some of the products are available for downloading.


Social Science Information Gateway (SOSIG)
http://sosig.esrc.bris.ac.uk/

This Web site provides links to social science resources around the Internet and a searchable database for finding the appropriate resources for your needs. The links emphasize quality over quantity and are not comprehensive. Each resource listed has a paragraph description, a list of key words by which the resource has been catalogued, and a link to the resource itself.


Theories of Psychology and Behavior
sci.psychology.theory

This newsgroup is unmoderated and reasonably active, covering topics such as Freudian theory, research methodology, IQ, and also many cross-postings from the other psychology-related newsgroups.


Thinking Allowed
http://www.thinking-allowed.com/

Jeffrey Mishlove hosts this video-oriented Web site offering a catalog of national public television series and a video library catalog to help people find video material related to consciousness research, psychology, philosophy, personal and spiritual development, health and healing, and the intuitive arts. Information on satellite broadcasts and schedules and comments from viewers and reviewers are also available.


UnCoverWeb
http://www.carl.org/uncover/

telnet://database.carl.org

The UnCover Company is widely known for its online database in which over 17,000 periodicals are indexed, including the psychology-related journals. At this Web site you can search the databases (free of charge) using keywords, author names, or journal titles and display the titles and journal information online for your hits. UnCover also provides a document delivery service through which you can enter your billing information online and mark the articles you would like delivered via fax or mail. The price at press time was $8.50 per article plus copyright royalty fee, so the service is not cheap. However, if you need that one article for a paper due tomorrow, the savings in time and travel may be well worth it. Many universities have accounts with UnCover so students and faculty receive discounts on articles and other services – check with your library before ordering on your own. UnCover account holders can also take advantage of the Reveal electronic alerting service for $20/year and receive automatic e-mails containing the tables of contents from specficied journals and the results of search strategies entered into their individual profiles. You can also access the UnCover database and related library catalogs via telnet at the address listed above.


Upstream: the Heterodox Online
http://www.mosaic.co.za/gavan/Upstream/

This alternative publication from South Africa is a well-organized magazine that takes controversial social issues and points readers in the direction of Internet-based evaluations and discussions. A psychology-related issue, for example, explored the hotly debated book The Bell Curve by Herrnstein and Murray, and listed annotated links that offered views for or against the propositions in the book. The page also pointed to some references that the Webmaster thought were balanced. The site is particularly intriguing because it takes advantage of the Internet's resources, but offers its own critique and evaluation of the content rather than just a list of links. The creator of this Web site insists that the magazine's unifying theme is heterodoxy, and it has no political agenda. It is not tied to any American political faction after all, he is not an American and these pages reside on another continent.


U.S. Government Printing Office
http://www.access.gpo.gov/

The home page of the Government Printing Office contains a searchable index of the Congressional Record, and full text since 1994. Also present is the Federal Register. You need an account to access these services; call (202) 512-1530.


U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
http://www.nara.gov/

The National Archives has a storehouse of material, though the cataloging of it is somewhat frustrating. Their Web site contains extensive information on the kinds of records maintained by NARA at the archive buildings in and around Washington, D.C., as well as those in other parts of the country. The Web site contains some exhibits of archived materials, some of them might be interesting to psychology students. One exhibit featured an analysis of persuasion tactics, with many posters from World War II designed to change attitudes, encourage enlistment, or motivate citizens to buy war bonds.


WATCH (Writers and Their Copyright Holders)
gopher://spruce.lib.utexas.edu:70/11/catalogs/ut_austin_catalogs/hrhrc/

This somewhat obscure gopher site may be just what you need if you are looking for hard-to-find copyright holders. It contains a database of names and addresses of people who hold the copyrights to unpublished manuscripts housed in North American libraries. It is designed to help authors obtain copyright permissions when they want to quote from an unpublished work. WATCH is a joint project of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Reading Library.


Citation Styles for Electronic Media

Professional librarians, researchers, and academic associations have spent years in debate to develop standards for citing materials found online. Unlike published articles or books, online material may disappear, change in content, or move to a new location days after the researcher cites it. Anyone looking for the citation may not be able to find it at all, or the material may have been altered by the time the next online researcher makes a visit to the site.
Another thorny issue involves the problem of identifying the document's actual location. The Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is becoming a standard on Internet, but documents can be quite long and they have no page numbers. A researcher who wants to cite a particular quotation in a lengthy Web page has no obvious way to tell the audience where in the document the quotation occurred, so those who want to locate the source must painstakingly sift through the entire document. Other online services do not generally use URLs anyway so reference citations are appearing more as directions on how to find the material than as standard citations. The writer may tell the audience to use a particular keyword, for example.
Citing an old mailing list or USENET message is especially hazardous. Many of these lists have no archives so it may not be possible to find it online at all. An author can cite a book that has gone out of print, knowing that copies are probably available somewhere. How,though, does an author cite a reference from a mailing list, suspecting that no one will ever be able to find the original material?
Citation styles for printed words and images have evolved over hundreds of years and a huge infrastructure exists ensuring that people who want to find them can locate the material. Card catalogs, subject coding systems, bibliographies, the Library of Congress system, and Dewey Decimal system are all available to help researchers locate the original source. Guidelines for the structure of citations exist for many disciplines, including psychology. What is needed now are standards for citing online material, ones that stress the ingredients needed for researchers to find it again, if at all possible. The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 4th edition, contains some guidelines for citing electronic media though it, too, points out that standards are in the evolutionary stage. The goal should be to credit the author of the work and enable the reader to find the material.

Bibliographic Formats for Citing Electronic Information
http://www.uvm.edu/~xli/reference/estyles.html
Web Extension to American Psychological Association Style
http://www.nyu.edu/pages/psychology/WEAPAS

Two other important sources for information about online citations are the Web sites referenced previously. The first one is by Xia Li and Nancy B. Crane, authors of The Official Internet World Guide to Electronic Styles: A Handbook to Citing Electronic Information, which will be published by Meckler in 1996. The second describes a proposed standard for referencing online documents in scientific publications that offers alternatives and extensions to the APA guidelines. WEAPAS invites comments and maintains a mailing list for discussion.