A journal is a collection of articles usually written by scholars in an academic or professional field. An editorial board reviews articles to decide whether they should be accepted. Articles in journals can cover very specific topics or narrow fields of research. Electronic journals, called e-journals, are published on the Web by some scholarly organizations and are made available to you from your library. A periodical index points to citations of articles in magazines, journals and newspapers.
Some periodical indexes contain abstracts or brief summaries of the articles.
You can use an online database, such as ProQuest Direct to find articles. Though many are full-text, many are not. Bloomfield College carries many different journals, both in print and online. Despite the prevalence of online indexes, it is important to understand the role of print indexes, such as the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, Social Sciences Index, and Psychological Abstracts. The most important reason - you may want to find articles published before 1980 and for some published during the 1980s.