You will usually be asked to read journal articles as part of your research for a paper. That's because journal articles provide the latest research results and scholarly writing on specific topics. This is because they are titles we subscribe to, rather than purchase just once.
Issues continue to arrive on a regular basis, and they are handled differently than books.
Also included as periodical literature are newspapers and magazines. Once they've been around a while, we have them bound and they move to their permanent location in the stacks. However, the records do not include details on the articles found in the periodical literature. Indexes and Abstracts Indexes and abstracts are used to find articles in periodical literature. These are regularly published reference materials that list articles by subject or author.