Searching PsycINFO by Subject or Author

Why use Subject Searching?

Subject searching is especially helpful when searching by  keyword produces many hits that are not useful. Searching by subject guarantees that all of the hits will be about your topic, in contrast to keyword searching, which frequently retrieves records for items that mention the terms in an insignificant way.

Before doing a subject search, be sure that the terms you are using are listed in the Thesaurus as subjects. If they are not, you will retrieve no hits. 

Why use Author Searching?

When you learn the name of a psychologist or researcher who did outstanding work in an area in which you are interested, you might want to access records for all of the books and articles written by that author. The most efficient way to do that is to do an author search.

The following exercise will show you how to perform searches by subject or author.

Click the image above to try an exercise!

Click on "Understanding the Citations" below to find out how to interpret the types of records in your results list.

Introduction | Performing a Basic Search | Using the Thesaurus | Performing an Advanced Search | Searching by Subject or Author | Understanding the Citations | Using the Catalog | Using Interlibrary Loan | Glossary