In order to avoid looking randomly through many individual magazines for articles about your topic, you can use a periodical index. There are many indexes available in this library. Indexes come in a variety of formats - print and electronic, called databases.
Some databases are full-text, that is the text of an article is available in the database.
Some databases include abstracts, short summaries of the articles. With so many periodical indexes and databases to pick from, it can sometimes be overwhelming thinking about which one to use to find citations for your topic. Below are some ideas to think about when deciding which one to use. People are often confused about the difference between a magazine and a periodical. Here are a few definitions.