Finding Periodical Information
| To understand how to find
information in periodicals, it helps to understand how information flows from idea to
dissemination. The publication cycle starts with scholars' informal research,
presentations at conferences, publication in journals, indexing, and repackaging in books
and/or encyclopedias. Scholarly and popular journals present the same research in
different ways, and the articles are listed in various publications by indexing and
abstracting services. ( Printer-friendly version of this page ) |
Periodical Information |
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| In the beginning there was an idea... Scholarly research begins at a place we can't generally see - the
"Invisible College," a loose network of information activity and sources that
are generally unavailable to the public. Ideas are generated, often by a solitary
researcher, and then discussed in the invisible college."
"Membership" is largely dependent on personal communications and often initiated
by meetings or conferences. The Internet has greatly expanded the size and number of
invisible colleges. During the research process scholars gather and discuss information and ideas behind the scenes using many different methods:
The flow continues through several steps toward dissemination:
Libraries are responsible for acquiring, organizing, and preserving knowledge in order to make it available to future researchers. To do this, they must acquire general periodicals, scholarly journals, books, and the indexes/abstracts/databases and other tools that make access to the information possible. |
Source: http://lib.nmsu.edu/staff/mmolloy/lsc311/infocy.html |
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Another way to look at how information moves from idea to dissemination following a publication cycle:
An example:
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Scholarly or Popular? |
TYPES OF PERIODICALS What is a periodical? Why use periodical information?
What kinds of periodicals are there,
and why is it important to be able to tell the difference? |
| Types of
Periodicals How to Tell the Difference The
following are broad guidelines and should not be taken as rules.
( Top of page) |
IDXIDXIDXIDXIDXIDXIDX |
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| PERIODICAL INDEXES AND ABSTRACTING SERVICES
What is a periodical index? What is a periodical abstracting
service? How are indexes and abstracting
services different from library catalogs? Furthermore, periodical indexes have no relation to the
library's collection. When you find references to articles using an index, there is no
guarantee that your library subscribes to the periodicals you identified. Libraries make
their own catalogs, but they purchase indexes from various publishers. These indexes are
general in nature and are not customized to match the library's collection. So after
identifying articles in an index, you always need to check the catalog to see if the
library owns the periodical.
To write a major paper, you would want a list of at least 10 citations to articles, especially since URI might not have all the periodicals that you wrote down. You can see that research is a very long and sometimes tedious process. You really can't just push a button and have everything you need pop up on your screen. You need to take it slowly and allocate significant time to finding the information you need. Fortunately, it is faster now than it used to be, because most of these indexes are computerized, although print indexes are still needed for older material. Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature
A sample from the March 2001 issue of Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature:
Subject Specific Indexes Some subject specific indexes
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| This course was developed by Joanna Burkhardt, Mary MacDonald
and Andrée Rathemacher and was adapted for online use by Jim Kinnie as part of the URI
Libraries Plan for Information Literacy - http://www.uri.edu/library/instruction_services/infolitplan.html
Copyright © 1994-2002. University of Rhode Island. Disclaimer. |