Online Search Guide - Searching for materials from databases Very often, when searching for source materials for a writing assignment, checking the periodicals will yield the best results. Periodicals are magazines and journals.
Magazines are typically less specific than journals and are written for the general public.
Two examples of magazines would be Time and Newsweek. Journals tend to be more academic than magazines and are usually aimed at a more specific audience. The good thing about finding articles from periodicals is that they are usually fairly short and will concentrate on a small area. This often means less searching around than with books. An abstract is a short description of an article or paper.