JOURNAL TITLE SEARCHING

As a college student, you will often need to find articles from magazines, journals [aka scholarly journals; aka peer-reviewed] and newspapers. You may be using an online index to articles in periodicals [magazines, journals and newspapers], or, in some cases, a print index. Regardless, an important step is to be sure you have the ***COMPLETE CITATION, which always includes the TITLE of the PUBLICATION. In a few cases, indexes [both online and print] abbreviate the periodical title; you will need to ascertain the complete, unabbreviated title.  Do not second guess citation abbreviations...because if you guess incorrectly, you will be looking for something that does not exist! If you cannot find a title list in the index, ask for assistance at the Information Desk.

***A COMPLETE CITATION = the complete, unabbreviated title of the magazine or journal in which the article appeared, PLUS the title of the article, the volume number of the magazine, the date of the magazine, and the page number(s) of the article [note: not all citations have the same info; for example, some do not have a volume or issue number.  Here is a citation as it appears in ProQuest:

DOES THE ISU LIBRARY HAVE THIS PUBLICATION?  Go to the Library Home Page (http://library.indstate.edu) and select Library Catalogs à Library Catalog {LUIS} à Author/Title/Subject/Call#.  To see if the Library subscribes to the magazine you need, select Journal Title search.  Enter the title of your publication. When typing in the title of your magazine, leave off any initial article (e.g., for The Journal of Musicology, your Online Catalog search should be:  journal of musicology).

If there is more than one record under your Journal Title, you will get a screen listing all matching titles. If only one title matches your search, you will be taken directly to the entry for that title.

Clicking on the Title that you think matches your search will take you to a Brief View screen. The screen contains a lot of information, some very important, and some not important at all! 

HOW DO I FIND THE SPECIFIC ISSUE I NEED? Now, look at the part of your citation containing the specific date of the article. In our example, we need the July 22, 2002 issue. You will find a separate part of the record for each type of material [print, electronic, microfilm, older bound]. Our issue is clearly found in Current Issues.

HOWEVER, it will eventually bound together, given a call number and placed with the other older issues, at JK 1 .U65. We still have a lot of older issues of magazines and journals available only in print.

Other parts of the record:

1)      Location=ISU Main Library  is a default phrase.  Look specifically for the information combination you need.

2)      CALL NUMBER and HOLDINGS INFO, -or- CALL NUMBER and CURRENT ISSUES.  If your volume/year is listed under HOLDINGS INFO, it will be under the CALL NUMBER on the appropriate floor of the library.  If your volume/year is listed under CURRENT ISSUES, it will be located, alphabetically by title, in Current Periodicals on the library's Lower Level.

3)      Location=ISU Electronic Resources/Call Number: [e.g., ERJ PDQ] means that the full-text of the article should be available online.  In the Online Catalog, this looks like a clickable link, but it isn't.  The real clickable link to the electronic full-text is Link to Electronic Subscription.

4)      Location=ISU Microforms Periodicals is also a default phrase.  Look for your specific volume/year.  If you find it, go to Teaching Materials, Microforms & Media (2^nd floor) and find the title alphabetically.

WHAT DO I DO WITH THE INFORMATION NOW? You can email records to yourself for later dissection, or print them.  Use the icons in the Save Options box at the bottom of the screen to print and/or email.

Free Printing of Online Catalog screens is available via the Online Catalog {LUIS} Express kiosks, located on all floors of the Library [note as of August 26, 2002, the only kiosk is on the 1^st floor]. Printing Online Catalog screens from the Library computers will otherwise cost you 7¢ a page

Library Instruction  

Copyright 2002 Indiana State University library.indstate.edu Updated September 5, 2002
Cunningham Memorial Library, 650 Sycamore St., Terre Haute, IN 47809
812.237.2580 Comments and Feedback