Organization & structure
Prior to delving into the various APA PsycInfo features, you should get an idea of how the database is organized. Comprehending the structure of the database is important, because this knowledge will allow you to run powerful and precise searches and locate highly relevant results.
Bibliographic records
Every time APA indexers and catalogers add a new article or other source to the database, they extract important pieces of information, such as bibliographic data, abstract, keywords, etc. from the full text. With this information, they create a bibliographic record for each source. In other words, they create a descriptive summary of the source.
APA PsycInfo currently contains over 4.9 million such records. Every time you search for something, the database goes through these records trying to find those that include your search terms.
To view samples of APA PsycInfo records, you may visit the Sample PsycInfo® records page on the APA website.
Search fields
The information included in each bibliographic record is neatly organized in nearly forty (40) different search fields, such as author, title, source, etc. You may see the full list of search fields used in APA databases in the Guide to the fields in APA Database records .
APA PsycInfo allows you to search in all those fields at once or select to search in particular fields depending on your needs.