Periodicals are any publications produced on a regular schedule, such as weekly, monthly, or quarterly. Periodicals intended for a broad range of readers or the general public are often called magazines , while periodicals intended for specialized scientific or scholarly readers are usually referred to as journals .
Newspapers are yet another type of periodical.
Periodicals are particularly valuable for current information, but are also useful for knowledge of the past. A periodical publisher generally assigns a volume number to several consecutive issues of its periodical. The C. W. Post Library owns several thousand periodical titles. Periodicals dealing with most subjects are located in the Periodicals Department on the lower level of the building. However, business periodicals are located in the Center for Business Research on the top floor , and library science periodicals are kept in the Library Science Library on the main floor .