On 9 Sep 2008 at 12:17, Mike Palij wrote: > NOTE: > one can use books.google.com to search for headshrinker for > publications in a time range; use the following string to identify > publications that presumably have "headshrinker" in them: > headshrinker date:1900-1950. > > However, a number of the sources that Google produces are > rather obscure but it does reference the American Psychologist, > page 264 in 1948. Examination of this issue through PsycArticles > shows that it contains the program for the 1948 APA convention > and a word search turns up no use of headshrinker, not on page > 264 or anywhere else. One wonders why Google "thinks" that > headshrinker should be there. If anyone has the time, perhaps > one could examine the other sources to see if headshrinker is really > in them or Google is providing false alarms.
False alarms. I tried to warn people about this in a post last week on using Google to search for articles of a particular date. But does anyone listen? No-ooo. Google appears to provide plenty of hits to a specified early period in Google Books. But this is an illusion, and they cannot be trusted. It seems that Google treats journals as books. The date it provides (actually 1946, not 1948 in Mike's example above) is usually the date of the first issue of the journal, which in the case of AP, is 1946. So all the hit indicates is that somewhere in this journal between its start in 1946 and presumably the present, someone used the word "headshrinker" Big help that is. And very strange. I complained to my daughter, who just happens to work for Google (really, and I have the T-shirts to prove it) but she felt she had more interesting things to do. I have noticed one improvement, recently, for at least some of the entries. Consider, in Mike's example, the hit "Socialist Commentary: Monthly Journal of the Socialist Vanguard Group" which uses the word "headshinker" and there's a snippet to prove it. It appears to identify it as "Description based on: Vol. 9, no. 2 (July 1943)" which would be exciting (to some of us, anyway) if it were true. But all that reference means is that the identifying information came from that early issue of the journal, not that that's the date of the snippet. But note that it also says "item notes: 1967". I believe that information probably refers to the true date of the snippet. That's the improvement, when it's given. On the other hand, there is a hit in the same search for Roget's International Thesaurus which carries a date of 1946. I think that the citation in that case is probably trustworthy, and "headshrinker" is listed in that edition of Roget. Probably, though, it refers to real headshrinkers, not the psych kind. But there's no snippet, and unfortunately, my library doesn't have that edition of Roget to check it out. Stephen ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Subscribe to discussion list (TIPS) for the teaching of psychology at http://flightline.highline.edu/sfrantz/tips/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
