Use a Journal or Periodical Index
A journal index (also periodical index) is a very helpful tool for finding published articles on your subject of interest. After searching by topic, a journal index will show you in which journal and in which issue an article appears. Since no one has the time to sort through all the thousands of articles published in magazines, academic journals and newspapers, indexes are very useful.
A Few Facts about Journal Indexes
Journal indexes (databases if they're electronic) are commercially produced so they cover journals the library may not own.
Some journal indexes, such as Academic Search Premier, Lexis-Nexis, cover journals in many fields, while others, such as PsycINFO, Biological Abstracts or Humanities Abstracts, only cover journals in a specific field.
Journal articles can be scholarly(peer reviewed articles based on research, eg. Modern Drama) or popular (usually either news or opinion, eg. Newsweek). Peer review is the process by which a piece of scholarship is evaluated and judged for quality and accuracy by other scholars and experts before it is published.
Choose a Journal Index
There are two good ways to choose a journal index from the many we subscribe to here at Brooklyn College Library:
- Talk to a reference librarian for assistance choosing the best journal index for your research
question. E-mail: RefDesk@brooklyn.cuny.edu or Phone: (718) 951-5628.
- Browse on your own on the Library's Website http://library.brooklyn.cuny.edu
under Research Resources By Subject for resources in your field.
NB: An excellent choice for getting started is Academic Search Premier, an online journal index that provides citations to or full text for over 3,200 scholarly publications covering academic areas of study including social sciences,
humanities, education, computer sciences, engineering, language and linguistics, arts & literature, medical sciences, and ethnic studies. Link to Academic Search Premier on the Library's Website http://library.brooklyn.cuny.edu under Research Resources By Title. (See below for remote access to resources.)
Search in a Journal Index
What a Journal Index Tells You
| Citations: |
Most journal indexes give you a citation to an article. The citation is the article title and author, the journal title, and the volume, issue number, pages and date. Sometimes a citation is for a chapter in a book. See a typical citation for an article at right. |
 |
| Abstract: |
A summary that accompanies some article citation (and the articles too). |
| Subjects & Descriptors: |
Article citations are often accompanied by subject headings (or descriptors). Descriptors provide good terms for continued searching, as well as showing what the article is about. |
General Index Searching Tips
Print:
Most indexes are electronic, so print indexes are best when you are looking
for material written before the mid 1980's. When searching a print index,
check the index under your primary subject, and then look for subdivisions.
See the example below.
Electronic:
One of the great things about electronic searching, is KEYWORD searching.
This means you combine terms you would like to find together in a single
document. For example:
For further searching tips, check "Help" in any particular database.
A typical results screen looks like this:
Notice the icon/links for full text - just click them for the whole article.
Also notice that you can mark records for printing, e-mailing or downloading.
Get the Actual Article: if the full text is not available in your
database, check to see if the library owns the journal. For information
on locating the full text of articles, please see
How
to Find Full Text of Articles (How to Guide #4).
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