Article ID: CBB529674486

Through the Looking-Glass: PsycINFO as an Historical Archive of Trends in Psychology (2018)

unapi

Those interested in tracking trends in the history of psychology cannot simply trust the numbers produced by inputting terms into search engines like PsycINFO and then constraining by date. This essay is therefore a critical engagement with that longstanding interest to show what it is possible to do, over what period, and why. It concludes that certain projects simply cannot be undertaken without further investment by the American Psychological Association. This is because forgotten changes in the assumptions informing the database make its index terms untrustworthy for use in trend-tracking before 1967. But they can indeed be used, with care, to track more recent trends. The result is then a Distant Reading of psychology, with Digital History presented as enabling a kind of Science Studies that psychologists will find appealing. The present state of the discipline can thus be caricatured as the contemporary scientific study of depressed rats and the drugs used to treat them (as well as of human brains, mice, and myriad other topics). To extend the investigation back further in time, however, the 1967 boundary is also investigated. The author then delves more deeply into the prehistory of the database’s creation, and shows in a précis of a further project that the origins of PsycINFO can be traced to interests related to American national security during the Cold War. In short: PsycINFO cannot be treated as a simple bibliographic description of the discipline. It is embedded in its history, and reflects it. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB529674486/

Similar Citations

Article Ana M. Alfonso-Goldfarb; Silvia Waisse; Marcia H. M. Ferraz; (2018)
New Proposals for Organization of Knowledge and Their Role in the Development of Databases for History of Science (/isis/citation/CBB938975549/)

Article Sandra Robinson; (2018)
Databases and Doppelgängers: New Articulations of Power (/isis/citation/CBB779695946/)

Chapter Stephen P. Weldon; (2015)
Historians and Their Data (/isis/citation/CBB944568735/)

Article Shayna Fox Lee; (2016)
Digital Methods for the History of Psychology: Introduction and Resources (/isis/citation/CBB976387475/)

Article Preger, R.; (2012)
The Oracle Story, Part 1: 1977--1986 (/isis/citation/CBB001211142/)

Article Wade, B. W.; Chamberlin, D. D.; (2012)
IBM Relational Database Systems: The Early Years (/isis/citation/CBB001211141/)

Article Campbell-Kelly, M.; (2012)
The RDBMS Industry: A Northern California Perspective (/isis/citation/CBB001211139/)

Article Darwen, H.; (2012)
The Relational Model: Beginning of an Era (/isis/citation/CBB001211140/)

Article Grier, David Alan; (2012)
The Relational Database and the Concept of the Information System (/isis/citation/CBB001211138/)

Article Rowe, L. A.; (2012)
History of the Ingres Corporation (/isis/citation/CBB001211143/)

Thesis Michael C. Castelle; (2017)
Transaction and Message: From Database to Marketplace, 1970-2000 (/isis/citation/CBB873579988/)

Chapter Galla Topalian; Matthieu Husson; (2022)
From Documents to Data: The Digital Projects of ALFA (/isis/citation/CBB930281487/)

Article Burrows, Simon; (2013)
In Search of Enlightenment: From Mapping Books to Cultural History (/isis/citation/CBB001421576/)

Article Rui Costa; (2018)
The Internet of Moving Things (/isis/citation/CBB210233176/)

Authors & Contributors
Weldon, Stephen P.
Testa, Simone
Flis, Ivan
Smith, Ailie
Rui Costa
Fox Lee, Shayna
Concepts
Databases
Relational databases; management
Digital humanities
Data collection; methods
Information technology
Business and commerce
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, late
Medieval
Enlightenment
20th century
18th century
Places
Italy
France
Europe
Canada
California (U.S.)
Rome (Italy)
Institutions
International Business Machines Corporation
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment