Finding Journals & Magazines

Journals and magazines are excellent sources of information on many topics and are available in a variety of formats (paper, microform and electronic) and locations throughout the library.

Both types are called periodicals.

Periodicals are:

Journals: Provide scholarly articles written by researchers.

Example: Journal of Retailing

Magazines: Provide articles written for the general public.

Example: Newsweek, Time

Journal and magazine titles are usually identified through citations (journal or magazine title, volume, issue number, year, pages) from a database, periodical index, bibliography, or any other source.

A Periodical Index, Database or Bibliography leads to:

The citation
which leads to:
finding the journal or magazine or:
interpreting the record to find the articles you need!

Reading the citation:

Before you can find journal articles in the library, it is important to get crucial information from the CITATION. If
the full text of the article is not online, you will need to locate the correct issue of the journal.  Many of the indexes
and BIBLIOGRAPHIES will give exactly the information you need, such as:

In this example, the arrow indicate the only FIELDS you need to find the article: author, article title, journal/magazine title, volume/issue, date and pages. The purpose is to gather enough information so that you can find the article.

Locate the name of the periodical: in the example it is the NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE. Depending on the database, it might also be called Source, Publication Title, Journal or be under the heading citation. Now that you know the name, you just need to find out if the library has it...

Locating a Journal or Magazine

There are different ways to find a journal in the library. Some journals may in print while others will be found online in a database.

Library Catalog

You can use the catalog to locate a journal in the library or in an article database.

On the Library Homepage, click on "Journals, Magazines, and Newspapers" link.

Type the name of the journal and hit search. If the journal is in the library you will see one or more RECORDS for the journal. If the journal is not available, you will see something that says "[journal name] would be located here."

Database
If you find a CITATION in a database that does not have the full text of the article, you can use the GET IT button to find out if the journal is available in another database or in print in the library.

Click on the GET IT button. This will bring up another screen that will tell you where the journal is located.

In this example, the journal is available in the Lexis Nexis(1) database and in print (2) in the library. The top link will take you to the journal in another database. The second link will take you to the RECORD in the library catalog.The final link allows you to request the article(3).

Definitions:

CITATION: Information to identify a source quoted, paraphrased, summarized, or referred to in a piece of writing.

BIBLIOGRAPHIES: A list of information about sources.

DATABASES: Stores information about specific items in the form of records and fields.