FINDING ARTICLES IN PERIODICALS

Using Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature

Current volumes of the Reader’s Guide are on the index table on the first floor.  The call number is Index AI 3 .R 48.

Readers’ Guide provides an index to articles published in over 250 of the nation’s most popular magazines.  Most bound volumes of Readers’ Guide cover one-year periods; issues for the current year are paperbacks covering several weeks or months each.  To identify articles on a particular topic, look alphabetically for the subject heading under which that topic is listed.  Sometimes you will encounter the cross-reference see, which leads you from a heading that is not used to one that is.  For instance, if you look under the phrase child care center in the 1989 Readers’ Guide, you will see this note:

                                                     CHILD CARE CENTERS See Day Care

This tells you to look under the heading day care in the same volume.  Another cross-reference is see also.  This cross-reference lists other terms that might be helpful to you. 

                      DAY CARE
                          See also
                      After school programs
                      Church and day care
                      Play groups 

After the see also cross-reference you will find a list of pertinent articles from different magazines.

America’s child-care crisis: the first tiny steps toward solutions.
    S. B. Garland.  il Business Week  p64-5+ Jl 10 ‘89
Brighter afternoons for latchkey children [involving seniors
    in day care programs].  il Aging  no359:20-1 ‘89
The child-care patchwork.  I.  Nyborg-Andersen and P. G.
    O’Brien.  il  Ladies’ Home Journal 106:199-200+ N ‘89
Choosing safe day care [views of Barbara Willer] S. Mahler.
    il McCall’s 117:62  N ‘89

Each reference to an article is called a citation. A typical citation can be broken down into several parts:

[Article Title]                             America’s child-care crisis
                        [Author]                                    S.B. Garland
                        [Special Features]                      il (illustrated)
                        [Periodical]                                Business Week
                        [Volume]                                   this magazine does not have one
                        [Page]                                       p64-5+
                        [Issue Date]                               Jl 10 ‘89 (July 10, 1989)

Prior to 1988 periodical titles were abbreviated.  These abbreviations, plus those for month and seasons are explained at the beginning of each volume.

To see if the Hartfield Library has the periodical(s) which contain the article(s) you are interested in, consult the Henderson Community College Hartfield Library Magazine Directory (shown below.)  This lists the periodicals held in this library and indicates in which format (hard copy or electronic) that they are available. 

Other printed indexes held by the Hartfield Library include the Humanities Index, the Biography Index, and the Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature (CINAHL).

Note: CINAHL full-text articles are available via the ProQuest electronic database.  Go to ProQuest, click on "Collections" and select "ProQuest Nursing Journals."  Any searches from this point will retrieve full-text nursing articles.