Print Indexes

Before computers came along print indexes were the only resource available to help you find articles and it is still important to understand how print indexes work, since the format has been carried over to the online medium. The JBS library contains a number of indexes which help researchers locate plays, poems, book reviews and articles from magazines, newspapers or journals. The latter type of index is called a periodical index. Click here to see a list of indexes available at the JBS library.

You have used indexes in the backs of books to find out what page in a specific book has the information you are looking for. You may have used the index volume of an encyclopedia to find out what volume of the encyclopedia contains the article about the topic you are interested in. Periodical indexes take this form of research one step further and tell you which issue of a magazine, newspaper or journal to look in for specific articles about your topic. Indexes are usually published every year and include information for the previous year, so the 1999 volume of the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature provides information about periodical articles published in 1999. If you want an article from another year you need to look at the volume for that year.

Citations

Print indexes provide citations to articles about a topic. A citation is the information that completely identifies a publication. After you find a citation for an article, you check to see if the library subscribes to that publication and if the specific issue that you need is available.

Citations usually include the following information:

- title of the article

- author name

- publication title (often abbreviated)

- volume number of the publication

- issue number of the publication

- date of publication

- page numbers

- additional information, such as the presence of bibliographies or illustrations

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Citation Example

Here is an article citation taken from the General Science Index with its component parts identified by the green boxes:

Most of the print indexes you will use will abbreviate the journal title. You may be able to guess what the abbreviation stands for, but if you can't, look in the front of the index for a list of abbreviations.

Citation Questions

Here is a citation from the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature.

1) Who is the author of the article?

2) How long is the article?

3) When was it published?

4) Does it have a bibliography?

5) Is there any other additional data about this article?

Finding the Article

Here's the bad news - finding the citation isn't enough for your research. You have to find the article and read it to decide if it will be helpful or not.

At the JBS library there is a binder called the "John Burroughs Periodical Listing" which lists all of the magazines, newspapers and journals that our library subscribes to. When you find a citation that looks useful, you need to check in this binder to see if we subscribe to the periodical and where it is housed in the library.

Back issues of periodicals may be stored in a number of ways at our library, including

- in the periodicals closet, cd-rom room, basement or stacks

- on display

- microfiche

- microfilm

Example - You find a citation for an article about Giant Pandas which was published in the March 1985 issue of Natural History. When you look up Natural History in the John Burroughs Periodical Listing you see this entry:

Looking at this entry, you should see that the March 1985 issue is available on microfiche at our library. Students may print microfiche or microfilm articles at our library - get a librarian to help you if you don't know how to do this.

Sometimes you have to do a little detective work to decide if you want to use an article or not. It takes time to look up citations, copy them out, check to see where they are stored in the library (if the library subscribes to them), find the actual articles and read them. One way you can save yourself some time is to examine the citations for clues that may tell you if the article is likely to be useful or not for your research.

Some clues are:

- Length of article (a one page article is probably not very useful)

- Kind of publication (is it People Magazine or Journal of Asian Studies?)

- Presence of bibliography (A bibliography lends authority to the article)

- Illustrations or maps (If you need those, make sure the citation includes a mention of them)

- Date (If you are researching a topic which is date sensitive, then this could be important)

 

Example

Here are two citations from the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. You are doing a report on racism and need a good periodical article. Can you make a decision to choose one of these citations over the other based on the clues given above?

Electronic Indexes/Databases

Many researchers prefer to use electronic indexes rather than print indexes when doing their research. There are some obvious advantages to the electronic indexes, which include:

- scope (electronic indexes provide information from many more publications)

- convenience (you can search many years at once, rather than one year at a time)

- speed (you can search more citations in less time)

- access (you can often search from outside the library)

One of the greatest advantages presented by electronic indexes is the availability of full-text. The electronic world does not present the same limitations of space that the print world does, and many companies that produce indexes have contracted with publishers to provide the full text of the periodical articles directly on the same site where you use the index for searching. This saves researchers the effort of tracking down the publication and allows them to print the article directly from the index being searched.

In addition to providing full-text articles. many electronic indexes include material from books, images, statistics, transcripts and other items that may be useful to the researcher. Most of the electronic indexes available at JBS fall under this heading, and as a rule we refer to them as databases. Click here to see a list of electronic databases and indexes available at JBS.