Publications that appear regularly within certain intervals of time.

Publications that are published continuously within a regular time frame

(daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.).

Publications that are published with some chronological regularity and intended to be published indefinitely.

Popular (newspapers, magazines, newsletters)

Trade/professional (published by organizations)

Scholarly (journals published by universities, colleges, scholarly societies, etc.)

Print Microform Ex: microfilm, microfiche Electronic format

Ex. CD-ROM or other standalone computer application such as SciFinder Scholar)

Online (available via the WWW)

DATABASES & INDEXES should become your best friends.

Databases available via UAlbany

Libraries are listed either: by subject

OR alphabetically

CONTROLLED VOCABULARY:

Library of Congress SUBJECT HEADINGS National Library of Medicine SUBJECT HEADINGS Descriptors assigned by indexers Thesauri assigned by indexers Ex. Art and Architecture Thesaurus

KEYWORD SEARCH: Any possible word that seems appropriate for a

particular topic KWIC (keyword within the context) and KWOC

(keyword outside the context)

ADVANTAGES: You get better

search results (more precise, smaller number of returned entries saves you time).

DISADVANTAGES: You have to find

controlled vocabulary terms first.

It’s inflexible – once a term is assigned, you have to follow it

ADVANTAGES: You use words

from your natural language.

You don’t have to come to the library and search LIBRARY OF CONGRESS SUBJECT HEADINGS (LCSH).

DISADVANTAGES: The number of

results returned is often overwhelming.

The relevance of the results is quite low (the computer searches for every possible use of your keyword).

Each database has a slightly different set of rules

Usually they use Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT

Truncation operators (also Wildcard characters): you can shorten the word and it will look for similar words with the same roots (diseas* will bring “disease” and “diseases”)

Proximity operators will search for terms within several words from each other in a phrase.

Read about every particular database you’re about to search.

Do not use too many search terms while performing a Boolean search (two-three is usually enough).

Once you find a good article, check descriptors (or subject headings) from the full record to get similar controlled vocabulary terms for subsequent searches.

When looking for scholarly journals, check delimiter “peer-reviewed” (in some publications it’s called “refereed”).

If in doubt go to Databases & Indexes and select Ulrich’s International Periodical Directory. It has all necessary information about your periodical (place of publication, initial dates of publication, subjects covered, etc.)

VERY USEFUL!