From now until May 26^th we have a  trial of the Linguistics & Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA) database.  If you study a topic related to language, linguistics, or speech this may be an important resource for you.  I could envision this being used by students and researchers in fields like Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, Communications, Modern Languages, and the Health Sciences.  Here’s the publisher’s description:

CSA Linguistics & Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA) abstracts and indexes the international literature in linguistics and related disciplines in the language sciences. The database covers all aspects of the study of language including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. Complete coverage is given to various fields of linguistics including descriptive, historical, comparative, theoretical and geographical linguistics. The database provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews drawn from over 1,500 serials publications, and also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, and dissertations.

You can access the database here. Please take a look at this tool and tell me what you think of it.  I really appreciate your feedback.

Does your program  require that you use APA Style for the research papers you write?

Did you go out and buy the brand new 6th Edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association?

Yes? Well, I have some bad news for you.

It seems that the first printing of the 6th edition is riddled with errors. What’s worse is that many of the errors are in the very examples you count on to make sure that your own writing is error-free.

How do you know if your copy of the 6th edition Manual is from the first printing? Two ways:

1. If you have the paperback and you bought it before November 2009 (in case you are reading this in the future), then you have one from the first printing.
2. If you have the hardcover or spiral bound book, just look at the fourth (unnumbered) page of the book. It’s the same page as the copyright and cataloging-in-publication data. At the bottom of the page it will say “First Printing” or “Second Printing”.

So, what can you do to be sure you are looking at the correct examples?  At the moment, all we can do is look at the two PDFs (here and here) of corrections that the APA has posted on their website.

At the moment, the APA has kindly decided that posting the errata in those PDFs is a better option than replacing the defective books with with the corrected second printing.  Don’t agree?   You could always contact APA Style to let them know how you think they should fix this problem.

Update: If you want to exchange your copy for a corrected “second printing” version they should be available after November 2 through the APA Service Center – 800 374-2721.

You can find an interesing story about this on the Inside Higher Ed blog.

Click here to search PsycINFO and PsycARTICLES (EBSCOhost)

It’s a trusted and familiar resource for finding scholarly articles, book chapters, books and dissertations in Psychology but could a different interface make it easier to use?  That’s exactly what I want to find out.

Now through November 21st, 2008 we have a trial of PsycINFO and PsycARTICLES on the EBSCOhost database platform.  It’s the same content that we have on the OvidSP platform, just a different interface.

Try it out, compare how you do the same search on both platforms, you know, kick the tires.  And then let me know what you think! Your feedback matters!