IST 605 Summer 2025
The earliest years of life are incredibly important and impactful in a human’s life. There is much to be examined about the topic in diverse fields, including psychology, neurology, anthropology, sociology — the list goes on. There are varying ideologies and schools of thought to explore and consider. This guide has been put together to give scholars at the University of Albany of all backgrounds a jumping off point as they venture further into early child development studies. Databases, indexes, books, and more from across disciplines have been conveniently gathered here to give researchers a jumping off point as they go deeper into their studies. Items are sorted by type, and linked for further exploration.
If you have more questions, reach out! Remember that librarians are available 24/7 via Library Chat on the library website: https://library.albany.edu/
“early childhood,” “child development,” “childhood development,” “human development,” “developmental psychology,” “infancy” “toddlerhood,” “cognitive development,” “childhood studies,” “developmental stage,” “psychosocial development,” "youth development"
Remember that when you use quotes around your search term, you are telling the search engine to search for the term altogether (this is typically a good thing!).
Searching can be a real challenge given the size of the internet, but using Boolean operators can help you narrow your search to keep relevant information in or out.
The most basic operators are AND, OR, and NOT (in all capital letters). Using these operators between distinct terms in your search can be super helpful. Using AND between, say "development" AND "childhood" will return only results that include both the terms development and childhood.
OR will tell the search that you are open to either term around the operator. That is, if you search "child" OR "youth," you will receive results that include the term child or youth, not necessarily the two together.
NOT will exclude results. If you searched "development" NOT "computers," the search would exclude results that are about development in relation to computers.
You can nest Boolean operations using parentheses. For example, you might want to research childhood development, but recognize that some sites might refer to the field as youth development. In this case, you might try this search: ("childhood" OR "youth") AND "development"