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The inability of college‐educated men and women to find and utilize information relevant to a given problem has become a matter of increasing concern to librarians and others, including members of the United States government. The skill that is required for such proficiency has been called “information literacy.” So serious has the problem become that a large and growing body of literature on the subject has emerged.

In the library community no issue in recent years has been so contentious as the rising price of serials. Managing a serials collection in libraries has always been a difficult task—challenging in terms of definition, and in terms of tracking and keeping records. Lately, however, justifying increasing costs has become even more difficult. The publication of journal articles with titles such as “The Journal That Ate the Library” and “Periodical Price Escalation: A Library Response” dramatize the cost crisis that librarians face.

Academic librarians are frequently called upon to provide instruction in relatively unfamiliar disciplines. This article presents introductory information for librarians providing bibliographic instruction (BI) in the field of psychology. Its primary purpose is to identify key readings from the library science and psychology literature that provide a basis for informed delivery of psychology BI. These works are fully identified in the list of references at the end of this article. Because the primary purpose of discipline‐specific bibliographic instruction is to teach the skills necessary for retrieval of the products of scholarship in that discipline, we begin with a discussion of scholarly communication and documentation, which describes how scholars and researchers within psychology communicate research findings and theoretical developments in the discipline. The major emphasis of this article is on formal, group instruction rather than individualized instruction, although much of the information will be applicable to both types.

A barrage of criticism has been leveled recently at those librarians championing the importance of bibliographical instruction and the reference interview. Some critics claim reference librarians, unable to restrain their “yen to teach,” insist on telling patrons which sources to use and which to avoid instead of providing them with requested materials. According to this view, instruction has replaced service, despite the evidence showing patrons prefer “user‐friendly CD‐ROMs such as Infotrac” to more traditional print reference services. In fact, claims one writer, the entire concept of the reference interview (or at least its present permutation) is a myth. Patron queries may need clarification, but no drawn‐out, analyzed interaction with patrons is mandatory for providing effective reference. Instead of posing counter‐questions, which may illustrate ineptitude as much as perspicacity, librarians should redirect their efforts toward mastering substantive knowledge.