Lesson 6:  Periodicals

An enormous amount of valuable information is to be found in the pages of periodicals.

• You may have heard a librarian or your instructor use the word periodical and wondered just what they were talking about. 
  
  
• Very simply, a periodical is a publication that comes out on a regular (sometimes irregular) recurring basis.  
  
  
• Newspapers, magazines and scholarly journals are all examples of periodicals.  

Periodicals are made up of articles.  

• Articles are shorter works on various subjects authored by, for instance, scholars, editorial boards or free-lance writers.  Because they can often be published more quickly than books, periodical articles are a good source for very current information.  

• Periodical articles often provide very focused, specific information on a topic.  In this respect, the subject of an article can be quite narrow.  For example, an article might report on the latest findings of a study on child abuse in a certain segment of society in a certain country.

All periodicals, however, are not the same.  Some are published for the general public, while others are intended for a scholarly audience.  For example:

• Popular Magazines

  • Magazines are general interest publications.

  • Article author may not be identified.

  • Usually, no list of references is provided at the end of the article

  • Usually articles are non-technical in nature. 

  • National Geographic is an example of a magazine.
    
    

• Journals

  • Journals are specialized publications for experts in different fields of academic and/or professional study.

  • The articles always have one or more authors.

  • A list of references can be found at the end of the article.

  • Articles use the specialized vocabulary of the field. and are intended for professors, researchers and students.

  • Journal of Marriage and the Family is an example of a scholarly journal.

Depending on your assignment, your instructor may ask you to use only information you have found in journal articles to write your paper.  

There are various reasons for this sort of limitation.  Journal articles are reviewed and evaluated by experts before they are published to ensure that the information presented is accurate and reliable.   Journal articles are written by specialists in a field of study for others in that same or related fields and for this reason tend to be thorough and detailed.  For more information about journal articles in general, please see our Journal Tutorial.

Periodical Indexes

To find articles on your topic you could always just look through magazines or journals until you come to an article you like.  However, that is time consuming and not the most efficient way to find what you need. 

To find an article on your subject you need to use a periodical index.  The library has an electronic periodical database, EBSCOhost, that will help you find articles in periodicals:

• To search for your topic in EBSCOhost enter keywords that describe what you are looking for.  EBSCOhost will search its database for articles with your keywords and list them for you to look at.  
  
  

• EBSCOhost may be searched from home if you have Internet access.  Ask at the Reference Desk for home access codes and passwords.
  
  
• You may also email articles to your home computer, download them to a disk, or print articles in the Library for a small print fee.
  

Important!  When you use a database such as EBSCOhost, you are accessing electronic versions of journal and magazine articles from established publishers. You are not searching the open Internet when you access EBSCOhost.