PERIODICAL INDEXES

A periodical index is a list of bibliographic citations to articles found in magazines, journals, and other types of periodicals. Online versions of periodical databases are more often referred to as databases. No single indexing service comprehensively covers all the periodicals, so when you are doing research, it is often necessary to use more than one index or database. Indexing services differ from each other in a variety of ways, most clearly in coverage and format.

Coverage

Each indexing service includes a different set of periodicals that it indexes. Some include a wide variety of types of periodicals; others restrict their coverage to a specific subject area.

General index services, such as Infotrac OneFile, cover a wide variety of subject areas and types of periodicals. A few titles from many different disciplines, from art and theater to biology and astronomy and social sciences in between, are usually included. The contents of both popular magazines and scholarly journals are indexed. Usually in general indexing services, the titles are the most widely circulated magazines and the most prominant journals. Infotrac OneFile, for example, includes in its database records for articles from periodicals that are the most widely held in college and university libraries regardless of subject.

Special subject indexing services, such as PsycINFO, a major source for the field of psychology and behavioral sciences, will only include articles from scholarly journals in specialized fields.

It is not always the case, but usually subject indexes will include only peer reviewed or trade journals. Because they have a subject concentration, subject indexes will have many more publications related to the subject than you will find in any general indexing service. For that reason, subject-specific indexes usually will be the better resources for serious research and for locating a wide spectrum of peer reviewed journal articles. A general indexing service, such as Infotrac OneFile, may include a few dozen periodicals related to behavioral sciences, but PsycINFO will index several thousand.

Indexes often overlap their coverage. Some periodicals may be indexed in several different sources. Exclusive agreements between publishers may mean that some journals will be indexed in only one resource. There is keen competition by the different publishers and vendors of periodical indexes and databases to provide the best and the most, but no one index is comprehensive enough to be the only source you need to consult in your research.

Format

Indexes take many forms. They may be online or in paper or both. PsycINFO is an online database provided by one vendor that the electronic version of Psychological Abstracts, the original paper index. The Ithaca College Library, however, no longer maintains the paper version.

For most periodical indexes, the Ithaca College Library now prefers the online versions, and the only indexes still kept in paper are for indexes or earlier volumes of some indexes that are not available online. Online periodical databases have several advantages over paper indexes, but there are two principal ones: 1) Online databases provide access to many years of coverage with one search that for the same coverage in paper might require you to look in as many as a dozen or more different issues and volumes; and 2) Online databases allow you to search for more than one subject or keyword at the same time to broaden or narrow your search more than you can with the a paper indexing service that require you to use one subject heading at a time.

The CD-ROM was a popular format for periodical databases for a short time, but the Ithaca College Library no longer subscribes to any periodical indexing service in that format.

Contents

Some indexes list only bibliographic citations; others will provide descriptions or summaries of the articles they list. These summaries are called abstracts.

Online periodical databases often provide what no paper index can: full text or page images of the articles they index. Not every online periodical database will provide full text, but a growing number of online databases also offer some access to the full text of articles. Full text, generally, means only the words of the article. If illustrations or graphics are included, they will be omitted. Some online databases also provide full text plus graphics. At an appropriate place in the text there will be a link to the illustration or graphic. Still other databases offer images of the original pages of the article. These are most often documents found in a format called PDF and require a special application, such as Adobe Acrobat, to allow you to read it.

With only a few exceptions, indexes are not evaluative, so they can be dangerous in their bounty. You may find hundreds of articles, and it will be up to you to judge which few articles might be the most useful to your research.

Using Periodical Indexes (GENERAL)

• STEP ONE: Choose indexes that are appropriate to your topic. Since the library subscribes to over a hundred different periodical indexes and databases, deciding which one or ones to use can be a difficult choice. Some general databases that offer full text can be good first choices. For more specific or comprehensive research projects, however, the more specific subject indexes and databases may be more appropriate. It is a good idea to use more than one database to locate articles, and, depending on the topic, you may have to use more than one database to get satisfactory results.

• STEP TWO: Look up subject headings or keywords that describe or relate to your topic.

• STEP THREE: Read through the whole list of bibliographic citations to get a general idea of what is being written. Look for trends in the treatment of topics, periodicals that cover your topic frequently, and the names of authors who show up often.

• STEP FOUR: Evaluate the citations. It is very tempting simply to choose only articles that are available in full text. However, the easiest choice is not necessarily the right decision. Although you cannot do a thorough job of evaluating articles without first finding them, there are some clues you can look for before you read the article. Titles can be misleading, but they can also be informative. If you can determine what type of periodical the article is found in and whether or not there is a bibliography, you can guess a good bit about the article itself.

• STEP FIVE: Select a few sources for closer examination. Copy down the complete bibliographic information of the sources.

• STEP SIX: Find the articles.
  1. If an article is available online:
     Read it and take notes before you print out a copy. Print it out only if you know you want to use it as part of your final bibliography. This will help you stay organized, and if you read it right away, you are more likely to read it. If you print it out, make sure you have the complete bibliographic citation with the article. You will need this information later.
  2. If the article is not available online:
     Consult the Ithaca College Library online catalog to see if this library subscribes to the periodical you need. Then go to one of the various locations in the library where periodicals are kept to locate the actual article. Read it and take notes before you make a photocopy. Copy it only if you know you want to use it as part of your final bibliography. This will help you stay organized, and if you read it right away, you are more likely to read it. If you copy the article, make sure you have the complete bibliographic citation with it. You will need this information later.

• STEP SEVEN: Continue the process with other indexes and subject headings.
  

Guides to Specific Databases

One of the advantages of electronic databases is that you can search for more than one thing at a time. Using an Online periodical database, you will often have a choice to do a very simple search or follow a very sophisticated search strategy. The sophisticated searches usually require Boolean logic

Unfortunately, the library must subscribe to the services of several different vendors to provide access to all its different databases. Each one is slightly different, and all change their formats and platforms routinely. That makes it impossible to prepare a single up-to-date guide to searching for articles online. All of the vendors provide help screens, however. Studies have indicated that help screens are among the least visited pages in any online database. Surprisingly, however, help screens often do have the very answers you are looking for if a database doesn't make sense, or if its format looks entirely different from the last time you looked.

How to Interpret a Record in an Index or Database

Most paper indexes will vary in their arrangement only slightly. Formats of different online databases may look different, but the elements included will be the same. The example below, which comes from the Readers' Guide Abstracts, available online.

AUTHOR: Leader, Shelah.; Tobias, Sheila.; Leader, Stefan.

TITLE: An intelligent woman's guide to defense, part II: the

procurement game.

SOURCE: Ms. v. 11 (Mar. '83) p. 58-63 il.

STANDARD NO: 0047-8318

DATE: 1983

RECORD TYPE: art

CONTENTS: feature article

SUBJECT: United States. Dept. of Defense - Procurement.

Weapons.

Women and war.

In this record:

Perceptions of women related to men's hairstyles. Kim M. Moody, Josie Delaney, Kris A. Mathews. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research Sep 1996 v34 n7/8 p331(17)
• Perceptions of women related to men's hairstyles is the title of the article.
• Kim M. Moody, Josie Delaney, Kris A. Mathews are the authors.
• Sex Roles: A Journal of Research is the title of the journal.
• Sep 1996 is an abbreviation for the date, September 1996
• v34 is the volume number
• n7/8 is the issue number (in this case, a combined issue 7 and 8.
• p331(17) is the pagination statement (in this case, the article starts on page 331 and there are 17 pages in the original paper version of the article.

There are three subjects listed in the record:

United States. Dept. of Defense - Procurement.

Weapons.

Women and war.

If you wanted to locate addition articles on this topic, you might search by any of these subjects or combine a search and use more than one. Some of the other codes that might need translating:

il. means the article is illustrated.

STANDARD NO: 0047-8318 This is something you probably won't ever need to worry about. But the International Standard Serial Number of Ms. is 0047-8318.

RECORD TYPE: art means the record you are looking at is an article. It could have been a book review, or something else.

CONTENTS: feature article means that not only is it an article, it was one of the main (featured) articles in the issue.