COM257: Media History & Theory
Course Instructor: Kelly Norris
Librarian: Jack McGeachy
Finding Journal Articles in the Library
It takes time for information to find its way into books. If you are doing
research on a topic that is happening how, you will have better luck beginning
your search with indexes to periodical literature.
Think of a recent news event: first, reports of it appeared on the
Internet, on TV and radio, then in the daily newspaper, and next in weekly
news magazines. Over time more lengthy articles on the event will appear in
more scholarly journals, and finally books on the topic might be
published.
For recent years many journal articles are available electronically, either
through links in the records contained in indexes of journal literature, or
within collections of electronic resources to which the library
subscribes.
When using these indexes, you really have two goals in mind:
1) First, you want to locate good articles on
your topic, and
2) then you want next to locate their complete
texts.
Approach these goals as two steps. First locate articles you want to read,
and then determine where you need to go to find their texts. The articles
will be in a variety of locations - on the web, in paper in our book stacks,
in a microformat, or available only from another library. The records in
indexes offer clues that help you locate articles, and you'll be following
different paths to get
your hands on the articles you need.
If a topic is a very current one, you may have trouble finding it covered
in a periodical index. It takes time for articles to be printed, and an
additional length of time for periodical indexes to be compiled and
distributed. Databases like Ingenta, that quickly make periodicals' tables of content
available electronically, are an attempt to shorten the time delay between the
appearance of an article in a periodical and the coverage of that article in
periodical indexing databases.
On the other hand, if your topic is a historical one, like Alexander Graham
Bell, Morse code, radio, or even the introduction of television, many relevant
journal articles are not indexed in electronic databases. You may wish to use
printed indexes of older journal
articles.
Librarian Contact Information
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