Maureen Hunter
July 2003
The Dictionary of Psychology (Corsini, 1999) offers this as one definition of the discipline, “The science of human and animal behavior as part of the total life process, including those bodily systems associated with behavior, sensory and motor functions, social interactions; the sequence of development, hereditary and environmental forces, conscious and unconscious mental process, mental health and disorder, the dynamics of behavior, the observation, testing and experimental study of behavior and the application of psychological knowledge to such fields as employment, education, psychotherapy and consumer behavior”. Obviously, there are few human activities that do not fall into one of the categories mentioned. This indicates the breadth of the Psychology collection.
The Department Head’s introduction provides a clearer statement of the subdivisions of the discipline which are emphasized at the University of
Calgary and the numbers of students served by the Department:
“Our Department is one of the most active teaching units within the
University, as Psychology is a very popular area of study for the 22,000 undergraduates. Every year, approximately1200 students are enrolled in our
Introductory Psychology course and about 7000 are enrolled in upper level
Psychology courses. At any one time, there are about 750 undergraduate
Psychology majors pursuing either BA or BSc degree. The Department also has an Honours program for select undergraduates who complete a research thesis in their final year of studies.
The Department offers graduate programs leading to the MSc and PhD degrees in seven areas:
Behavioral Neuroscience
The goal of the Behavioural Neuroscience specialization is to conduct research and train research scientists in the experimental analysis of behaviour and its functional correlates in the nervous systems of humans and animals. The group uses advanced electrophysiological and metabolic indicators of nervous system activity as well as standard behavioural and neuropsychology methods.

Clinical Psychology
Uses the scientist-practitioner model to do research and train students in the areas of assessment, diagnosis and treatment of behaviour disorders and mental distress.
Cognition and Cognitive Development
Focuses on cognitive processes in adults and children, specifically language acquisition, language processing, psycholinguistics, attention, memory, concept formation and theory of mind.
Industrial and Organizational Psychology
Industrial Psychology focuses on the individual with specific reference to job analysis, job evaluation, selection, interviewing, test development, testing, placement, training and performance, leadership, motivation, program evaluation and decision-making. .Organizational
Psychology is concerned with issues that arise when individuals are brought together to accomplish a purpose. These include organizational context, structure, development, transformation along with team development, group dynamics and strategic planning. er
Perception, Aging and Cognitive Ergonomics
The central tenet of this specialization is that the effective application of research from experimental psychology must be founded on a thorough understanding of basic auditory, visual, psychomotor, cognitive and perceptual processes. Students will be prepared for careers in the complementary fields of gerontology and human factors.
Social Psychology
The research mandate involves four interwoven areas of traditional research: social psychology, life span development, personality and cultural studies. This integration reflects the reality that all human behaviour and experience, directly and indirectly, occurs in social and cultural contexts. A basic assumption is that social and cultural contexts, as well as biological and personality characteristics, work together and interact over the s lifespan to influence behaviour and experience.
Theoretical Psychology
This specialization is concerned with the systematic examination of foundational ideas and approaches in the science and practice of psychology.
Among others, this involves historical and critical explorations of established approaches to knowledge generation, critical examination of various conceptual issues (gender studies, health studies and instruction and evaluation of new traditions of knowledge generation (discourse analysis, qualitative research methods)

(The descriptions of the seven specializations are taken from the web pages of each and are not part of the Department Head’s introduction.
The research programs of our faculty and students span many disciplines and reflect the diversity of interests within our Department. These include language processing, cognitive functioning in depression, discourse analysis, occupational stress, electrophysiological investigations of hippocampal functioning, personal relationships, cognitive development, organizational justice, psychopathology, human factors engineering, age-related changes in sensory and perceptual processes, learning and memory in the central nervous system and visual attention – to name but a few”.
As the preceding statement indicates, the Department offers large numbers of service courses as well as those related to the majors. This means that the collection must try to cover many social issue topics that will be of interest to those taking only one or two Psychology courses. General faculty consensus is that the research needs of Psychology majors are met more by journal articles than books.
Teaching Focus
Undergraduate Programs:
All of the seven areas mentioned above are covered
Psychology majors may elect the BA or BSc degree.
Students at Red Deer College may obtain a BA in Psychology from U of C but there are no Library implications that can be identified.
A joint degree is offered with the Department of Community Rehabilitation and Disability Studies
Graduate Programs:
Graduate students are organized into Clinical and Experimental groups but all seven areas of specialization are represented.
Research Focus
The Department has a strong experimental bent with extensive work being done in several labs. The work done in these labs employs specific machinery to test visual acuity, word recognition, reactions to driving cues, etc, so there is very little support material offered by books. The Department purchases the appropriate technical manuals.

Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory
Cognitive Development Lab
Cognitive Sciences Laboratory
Interdisciplinary Research Laboratory on Human Development
Language and Cognitive Development Laboratory
Language Processing Laboratory
Neural Plasticity Laboratory
Perceptual and Cognitive Aging Laboratory
Vision and Aging Laboratory
The work done in these labs and related courses is supported by the journal collection, with very few faculty requests for monographs. Attempts are made to acquire key works in the areas of neuroscience which may be comprehensible to the neophyte. Because the Clinical area deals more with interpersonal contact based on extensive knowledge of clinical interventions, the book collection is an important resource developed with considerable faculty input.
The monograph collection has been designed to serve the needs of undergraduates who still need to develop some background so that they can make sense of the articles that will support their work.
The Psychology specializations which make significant use of monograph material are Clinical, Social and, to a lesser extent, Cognitive. Theoretical
Psychology looks to the writings of past masters and is served by the occasional acquisition of sets of collected works.
The Pillars of Prominence document identifies Neuroscience and Cognition as the two greatest strengths of the Department. The Driver Simulation
Facility is well known and has received financial support from US and
Canadian sources. Dr. D Kline has led much of the research on vision and its relation to aging and driving issues. Dr. P. Pexman and her associates have received significant NSERC and SSHRC support for their work on developmental reading and cognitive development. Dr. G Fouts has published extensively in the area of media influence on children. While not mentioned explicitly in the Academic Plan, the work of the Department on
Health Psychology and its general mission will feature strongly in the first pillar of Advancing Health and Wellness and in the fourth, Understanding
Human Behaviour, Institutions and Culture, specifically the area of language learning and literacy.

Interdisciplinary Considerations:
Psychology provides the theoretical basis for most human sciences and this fact is mirrored in the collection. Material purchased for Clinical also acts as the underpinning for Counseling and Educational Psychology (both now known as Applied Psychology). There is no way to distinguish content that may be pertinent to any or all of those areas. Social Psychology is strongly related to Sociology, Social Work and Political Science and is also relevant to Education, as is Developmental Psychology. There is also a close tie to
Rehabilitation literature.
Approximately half the books purchased for 5067 are selected for the thousands of non-majors who take the occasional Psychology course or who will be looking for the psychological research that provides the foundation for most social science commentary.
Exclusions:
Faculty member who focus on neuroscientific subjects rely heavily on the
Health Sciences Library. No attempt is made to purchase in this area beyond a few undergraduate titles. So both Behavioural Neuroscience and the
Perception, Aging and Cognitive Ergonomics specializations are served mainly by the journal collection and Health Sciences. Some Gerontology material is acquired but mainly that which has a clinical bent.
Industrial and Organizational material is supported more by the Business
Library since that is where the journal literature is found as is anything relating to business organization.
No textbooks are purchased unless they cover new or developing areas of
Psychology or have been written by local faculty members. No self-help or popular, best-seller material is acquired. Rare exceptions to this rule are personal accounts of survival of mental illness, which are well reviewed and give students an illustration of clinical issues from the patient’s point of view.
Because the current Liaison Librarian also controls the Education and
Rehabilitation funds, there is no formal agreement on crossover purchases; this is done on an ad-hoc basis.
Selection Notes:
Only English language material is acquired with the rare exception of
Canadian titles in French.
Titles must be scholarly and aimed at upper division undergraduates

Titles are generally North American with some British additions. The differences in approach and language limitations preclude European material, except as it might be requested for Theoretical Psychology.
Key Publishers:
American Psychological Association
Bradford/MIT
Bruner-Routledge
Guildford
Haworth
Lawrence Erlbaum
Sage