Often pages, volumes and other information will be included in a citation. Reference Assistant Reference assistants are not professional librarians, but they have been trained to help you with many of your research needs. Some reference departments hire reference assistants to help answer reference questions and provide general information about the library. Periodical Indexes and Abstracts Periodical indexes list articles which have appeared in journals, magazines, or newspapers. They list author, title, name of periodical, volume, pages and date of publication.
Abstracts are indexes that also contain summaries of the content of the article.
Both indexes and abstracts are found in reference departments. They may be in print form, on a CD-ROM terminal, or available in the Library Gateway. A special department within a library where you can find librarians, reference assistants, and a collection of reference materials to help you with your research needs. Reference Collection A selection of networked, CD-ROM, and printed library materials used by reference librarians and reference assistants to help people find information or to do research. Reference collections contain many sources of information, such as encyclopedias, dictionaries, almanacs, directories, or statistical compilations.