Online Databases: Magazines and Journals

Sections:
1) Magazine and Journal Articles
2) Newspaper Articles
3) Literature Resource Center
4) Subject Specific Databases
5) Quiz

Magazine and Journal Articles Databases

CSM Library subscribes to a number of databases that index magazine and journal articles.  (For a discussion about the differences between popular magazines and scholarly journals, refer back to the section on "Determining Sources of Information.")  Many, but not all, of these publications are available in full-text.  In some cases, you will only be able to see basic bibliographic information about articles from the indexed publications, e.g. title, author, date, and possibly an abstract. In most databases there is a box you can check if you only want to see citations for articles for which the full text is available.

If you want to see whether the library subscribes to a specific magazine or journal (either in print or online), use the "Find Periodicals" search engine. This is also the best way to find a specific article if you have a citation for it. You can also browse publications by subject on this page.

In most cases, however, you will be searching for articles on a given topic and will want to search multiple publications simultaneously.  To do this, you will use one of the many periodical databases to whichthe library subscribes. For a full list of these databases, organized by topic, consult our Online Databases page.

Some of the major general-interest, multidisciplinary magazine and journal databases the library subscribes to are:

eLibrary
[on-campus login] [off-campus login]

 Expanded Academic ASAP

InfoTrac OneFile
Lexis Nexis Academic Universe
[on-campus login] [off-campus login]

As with the library catalog, use keyword searches in these databases to lead you to relevant subject headings.  It's also a good idea to use the advanced rather than the basic search interfaces.

 

Understanding Periodical Citations


It is important to be able to correctly read citations from periodical databases. Although the appearance of citations may vary from database to database, they all have a similar structure with many common features. For example, given below are screenshots from a typical citation from Expanded Academic ASAP.

Let's examine the information presented here:

Citation information:

The art of persuasion in politics (and science).
This is the title of the article

COMMENT AND OPINION
Book Review
These tell you what kind of article this is.

Don't Think of an Elephant ...
This is the book being reviewed.

Benjamin Wolozin
This is the name of the author of the article

Skeptical Inquirer
This is the title of the magazine or journal.  (You can usually recognize it by the fact that it's in italics or underlined.)

31.1
This refers to the volume (31) and issue (1) of the magazine or journal.  Generally, this means that the publication is in its 31st year, and this is the first issue of the year.

Jan-Feb 2007
Date of the issue

p15 (3)
The article begins on page 15 in the print version of the journal and the article is 3 pages long.

Note: The type of information you will see in the citation will vary from database to database and will depend on the type of publication and article being described.

Subject Terms
On the left-hand side of the screen you will see formal subject headings assigned by the database publisher to describe and categorize this article. (These are analogous to the Library of Congress Subject Headings in the library catalog.) Click on any subject term to see other documents that have been assigned the same subject heading.

Practice Using Expanded Academic Step by Step

1. Go into Expanded Academic ASAP.
(Note: If you are connecting from off campus, you will be required to type in your library card number.)

2. Do a keyword search for Genetic Engineering.

3. You will get many, many results.  Note that these are organized under various tabs based on the category of publication ("Academic Journals," "Magazines," "News," etc.).

4. At this point, if you wish, you can limit your results to full-text or peer-reviewed publications by checking the relevant boxes at the top of the screen.

5. Scroll through the search results under any of the tabs and click on the title of a relevant record. The full-text article will be displayed when available. The article may also be available as a PDF file (which will show you the article exactly as it appeared in print).

6. To print or e-mail an article, look for the appropriate icons at the top or on the side of the screen.

7. To go back to your original results list, click the "Results" link near the top of the screen.

8. To find other articles on the same subject, use the "Related Subjects" links on the lefthand side of any article.

Adapted from:
College of San Mateo, LIBR 105: Online Research Skills
Skyline College, LSCI 100: Introduction to Information Resources

Go to Next Section

Home | Research Tools | Library Services | Instruction & Tutorials | About the Library