An introduction to psycINFO : the on-line bibliographic database in psychology

It is the purpose of this article to initiate psychologists and behavioral scientists in the use of PsycINFO, the online bibliographic database, which is a very useful and effective research too1. Our emphasis is on the importance of decision rules in search strategy, along with an explanation of the classification system used in the database and the contents of the "thesaurus" published by the American Psycho1ogical Association. We also provide detailed examples of how to gain access to PsycINFO in Japan, and how to make optimal strategic search decisions when looking for articles on a specified topic, such as "history of research in personality.