CONTENTS: Introduction Types Formats Locations Journal Indexes Choosing the Right Index Search Techniques Citing Full-Text Indexes Printer Friendly Version BACK TO: Tutorials home page

Finding Periodical Articles

Choosing the Right Journal Index

1. Go to the LSU Libraries' webpage (http://www.lib.lsu.edu) and select "Indexes and Databases" from the "Research Tools" column.

2. Chose the appropriate subject area. Journal indexes are listed by subject so you need to figure out which subject area your topic falls under.

Example: if you are looking for articles about "Shakespeare," you would choose

"Arts and Humanities--Literature"

Keep in mind that some topics may be cross-disciplinary. For example, if you're researching school busing:

legal indexes would help you find articles about shool busing laws

educational indexes would help you find articles about how busing affects students' grades

psychology indexes to see how busing affects childrens' personality development

3. When you click on your subject, you will see a list of the best indexes to use to find articles in that subject area. There will probably be several different indexes listed--how do you know which one to choose? Just click on their descriptions (the yellow circle in the "Info" column). You'll see a brief description giving you more information about the index and what kinds of journals it indexes. This information should help you determine which is the best index for your topic.

4. Select the best index and look up your topic using keyword searching techniques such as boolean operators, truncation, and nesting. (For more information on keyword searching go to the library's "Searching Techniques and Strategies" webpage)

5. If your index is a full-text database, you can print the articles out. If the full-text of your article isn't available online, you'll need to look up the names of the journals in the library catalog to find out whether or not the library has the journals in print format. Be sure to type in the name of the journals and NOT the names of the articles. This is the most common mistake people make--but remember, the catalog only knows what journals we have, not what articles are in them!

          

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