LSU Libraries - Finding Periodical Articles

CONTENTS:
Introduction
Types
Formats
Locations
Journal Indexes
Choosing the Right Index
Search Techniques
Citing Full-Text Indexes

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Using Journal Indexes to Find Periodical Articles About a Particular Topic

The library catalog can tell you what journals we have and where they are in the library but they can't tell you anything about the articles inside of them. If you want to find articles about a particular topic you need to use a "journal index" instead. You simply look up your topic in a journal index and it gives you a list of "citations" about your topic. A citation is a couple of lines of information telling you exactly what articles talk about your topic. Each journal index is a little different but citations for journal articles usually appear in this order:

Example:

Often the names of the journals are abbreviated and you have to go to the Reference Desk and look in a book called "Periodical Title Abbreviations" to see what the abbreviations stand for. In the citation above, for example, the journal is abbreviated as "J Inter Stud World Aff." If you look it up at the Reference Desk you'll see that it stands for "Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs" and you can then look it up in the library catalog to see if the library has it.

Most journal indexes just give you citations like the one above. Some also give you "abstracts," which are short 2-3 sentence long summaries telling you what the article is about. Some online journal indexes give you copies of entire journal articles; they're called "full-text indexes."

The LSU Libraries have over three hundred different journal indexes! Many of them index articles in a particular field. Some examples are:

Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals

Bioengineering Abstracts

Current Index to Criminal Justice Periodicals

Animal Behavior Abstracts

Most of the print journal indexes are in the Reference Area on the first floor. The online journal indexes are available through the LSU Libraries' webpage at http://www.lib.lsu.edu/databases/

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Last Updated: Wednesday, 29-Aug-2007 16:48:18 CDT