Print full-text articles. Ensure you have all the required bibliographic information. Other terms sometimes used in place of periodical are magazine, journal, and serial. You can find periodical articles about a particular subject by using a periodical index. The publisher of a periodical index selects a list of periodicals and hires indexers to read and apply subject headings to every article.
Indexers use a controlled vocabulary of official subject headings.
The paper index provides a list of the subject headings and the citation or bibliographic information for each article assigned that subject heading. The CD-ROM periodical index provides the citation information and usually an abstract, or brief summary of the article. The abstract helps you decide if the article will be useful. The web subscription service provides the citation, the abstract, and oftentimes the full-text article which can be run off on the printer. Electronic periodical indexes also provide the added advantage of keyword and Boolean searching.