Titles that have been preserved on microfilm or microfiche are located in the Microforms section of the library on the first floor. An abstract is a short summary of the content of a book or article. Abstracts are often included in indexing tools, which guide the user to particular books or articles on a subject but do not provide the full text of those materials. A journal is a publication which comes out periodically. A journal is generally considered to be a scholarly publication, and it is often published by an academic publisher or a professional society.
Magazines also come out periodically but are usually geared for a more general audience.
If you see a publication in a grocery store or other general news stand, more than likely it is a magazine and not a journal or scholarly publication. The World Wide Web is immense and largely uncontrolled. It is used to provide public access to our Web-based library catalog and to electronic resources that we have subscribed to on behalf of SMSU students, faculty, and staff. Not everything we own can be accessed through the libraries home page. SWAN, the library catalog, is a finding tool.