However, since the library subscribes to thousands of journals that go back many years, this would be VERY time consuming. Using an index, a researcher starts with topical terms and finds references to specific articles in a variety of journals. Some electronic indexes will give the entire text of an article on the computer. However, most indexes provide citation and abstract information. An abstract is a brief paragraph describing the article.
Some indexes use a list of subject headings in place of or in addition to an abstract.
Citations from an electronic index look a little bit different but contain the same information. To find the citation information, you start by looking up the subject term in the subject or keyword part of the index. Some indexes provide the citation information with the subject term. Others will have an accession number that refers you into another volume of the index. This system is more common for scholarly, in-depth resources.