Sometimes they may be your best source. Periodical Abstracts and ABI Inform will tell you what library owns the magazine you're interested in, including ours. In many cases they will offer you full text of the article you're looking for. For example, if you're interested in investigating whether or not Japanese people express emotions in the same ways that Americans do, try combining the words Japanese and emotions. Sometimes this takes a minute, but it can be well worth the wait.
Newspaper Abstracts can be a good source, also.
Newspaper Abstracts indexes several newspapers. You can use that index to pinpoint the article you need, which is probably available in Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe. You can access this from the OhioLINK home page . You'll find others, as well, arranged in subject areas. Both of these offer full text articles.