Library Support for Psychology
January 18, 1999

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It is difficult to separate and detail the support provided for the various programs in the brain sciences, i.e.: Cognitive & Linguistic Sciences, Neuroscience, Psychology, and Computer Science. Of these, Computer Science can more easily be separated from the others, but the first three so overlap in their interests that there is barely anything supporting one that does not support the other two. As these programs have grown at Brown, so has Library support for them. We do not track expenditures for Neuroscience separately from those for the rest of Biology. If we assume that they amount to a quarter of those expenditures, and add them to the expenditures for Cognitive & Linguistic Sciences and for Psychology, we have a total of $168,746 in expenditures for the three programs in fiscal 1997/98.

During the 1990s, two major developments have impacted the Psychology Department. One was the creation of the Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, which shares not only some subject interests, but also some faculty members. The other development was the hiring of faculty members whose research and teaching center on social psychology. This has been a new direction for Brown and for what the Library needs to do to support Psychology. Currently, there is a proposal to establish a Brain Science Program. The goals of this include establishing a "pre-eminent graduate training program in brain sciences" .... "To maintain outstanding undergraduate training in brain sciences through new courses and collaborative activities among brain science concentrations"...."To establish Brown University as a world leader in brain research." These goals bear heavily on Psychology. Also, it makes a lot of sense to view the Psychology, Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, and Neuroscience departments together.

The challenge for the Library collection in meeting the needs in these areas has been and will be with the journal literature. For example, the demand develops this way. The social psychology courses have large enrollments, the students use PsycLIT for researching their papers, and that stimulates a large demand for journals we do not own. I see that from the undergraduate level, but there would be the same trend for the graduate students. We have not adjusted our journal collection as we did our monographs. Our solution has been massive use of interlibrary loan. However, the Library currently is initiating a mechanism to address this problem. We now will more quickly order journals that have demonstrated a record of demand via interlibrary loan. The following journal titles, as examples, are ones borrowed on ILL many times each year and/or have been requested by faculty. These titles were listed by the Library in response to the Brain Science Program proposal.

• Applied Developmental Science
• Artificial Life
• Brain, Behavior, and Immunity
• Cerebral Cortex
• Current Directions in Psychological Science
• Current Opinion in Neurobiology
• Group Processes and Intergroup Relations
• Health Psychology
• Journal of Behavioral Decision Making
• Journal of Computational Neuroscience
• Journal of Consciousness Studies
• Journal of Neuroscience Research
• Laterality
• Learning and Memory
• MCN: Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience
• Machine Translation
• Memory
• Molecular Cell
• Molecular Neurobiology
• Natural Language Semantics
• Nature Neuroscience
• Neural Computing and Applications
• NeuroImage
• Neurochemistry International
• Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Review
• Seminars in the Neurosciences
• Thinking and Reasoning

The Library is attempting to gain electronic access to the full text of electronic journals as they become available and the financial terms permit. The main electronic bibliographic tools for topics within psychology are PsycLIT and MEDLINE. PsycLIT indexes over 1300 journals back to 1887 as well as multi-authored books back to the mid-1980s.. MEDLINE covers 3800 journals and contains records back to 1966.

The Library holds some 11,000 titles in areas that have been designated as supporting Psychology. Among these are 157 current serial subscriptions. Total expenditures for support of Psychology for the past three years were:

As we said above, however, none of this support can be separated from that for the other departments in the brain sciences. Our collections in the physiological side of psychology continues to be strong and has benefited from the mutual collecting interests with Neuroscience, Biology, Medicine, and Cognitive Science. It should be strengthened further if the Brown Brain Science Program becomes a reality. Social Psychology is a growing collection, but is only adequate for the needs of the faculty.

» Frank Kellerman, Sciences Librarian
» William S. Monroe, Head, Collection Development