This is the online adaptation of the printed library instruction workbook. This is the online version of the library instruction workbook compiled by Gail Urago, with assistance from Janet Black, Tiffany Severns, and Ralph Toyama. Periodicals are materials that are issued periodically such as magazines, journals or newspapers. Journals are scholarly publications containing reports of research conducted in a particular field. Journals are considered to be a high quality source of information because the articles are often closely reviewed by specialists in the field before they are published.
Newspapers are often the best source of local information.
In order to find articles in periodicals, we need to use a special kind of index called a periodical index. This index, like the ones in the back of books, tells you where to find information. In periodical indexes, you still look up the information by topic, but the index gives you much more than just a page number. It also tells you the title of the article, the author, the title of the periodical, the page number the article begins on, and sometimes, the length of the article. All of this information is referred to as a citation.