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• Introduction
• Before you being your article search
• Deciding which index to use
• Accessing databases from home
• Does the library own it?
• Additional hints for finding articles

Glossary
Citing sources

Quick Links

Communication Portal

Just For Your Class
Comm105 Public Speaking
Comm209: Finding Books
Comm209: Finding Articles


Using Interlibrary Loan and Universal Borrowing

Communication Department homepage

The prior session discussed how to find books on a topic, but it actually is more common to find articles for most topics just because there are more articles published than books. A book is a long consideration of a topic, prepared over several years, by one or more author. An article is a short discussion, often of one small project, completed in much less time (usually under a year), and published more quickly (usually about a year, as opposed to several years). It is inappropriate to limit your search to any one source type, because there will nearly always be some books and some articles on your topic that are directly relevant, and you will want to read sources of both types. Remember that individual articles are not listed in library catalogs; only the names of the journals in which they are published appear. Therefore, you cannot use any of the tools described in the section on finding books, but must learn a new set of tools, in order to locate journal articles. These tools are generally called either an index or a database.

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WHAT'S INCLUDED IN ARTICLE INDEXES: The indexes to which the UWP library subscribes contain information about articles found within specific issues of magazines, journals, and newspapers. A magazine is a popular source, like Time, or Rolling Stone. A journal is an academic source, like Communication Theory, or Journal of Communication. Magazine articles are usually written by reporters; journal articles are normally written by professors or other scholars in the field. It is always appropriate to use journals for college papers, but it is often inappropriate to use magazines or newspapers. Check with your professor to learn whether popular sources will be permitted for your particular assignment. Some assignments specifically call for newspaper sources, for example, a study of newspaper coverage of a particular issue. Some indexes only provide citation information, while other indexes provide citation information as well as full-text access to articles. Our indexes will also tell you whether or not we subscribe to a particular journal/magazine/newspaper in a print format. Notice that a lot of information that is not to be included in the APA citation will also be listed (such as how many charts or photographs are included); remember to drop out this information when preparing your list of references in APA style.

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Select the Journals, Magazine, and Newspapers Articles link on the Library's homepage. From here you can search for citations to articles in all of the electronic indexes to which the Library subscribes.

MULTI-DISCIPLINARY INDEXES: Several indexes can be used as starting places: Academic Search Complete (Ebsco), Omnifile (Wilson), and Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe.

These multi-disciplinary indexes include both scholarly journals and popular magazines, as well as a few newspapers. Each allows you to limit your search to only scholarly (or "peer-reviewed") journals. Academic Universe (Lexis-Nexis) includes fewer scholarly journals but many more newspapers and trade journals. It's also a good source for transcripts.

SPECIALIZED INDEXES: To find specialized indexes available for each discipline, use the Periodical Indexes-Subject List on the Journals, Magazine, and Newspaper Articles page. Relevant disciplines might include psychology, education, sociology, english, business, history, political science, and women's studies. The obvious beginning points for research in Communication are ComAbstracts and Communication and Mass Media Complete.

ComAbstracts offers keyword access to citations and abstracts for 59 journals. Simply enter your search terms in the keyword search box. With a few exceptions, indexing of each journal begins sometime in the 1980s and extends to the present. To see a list of journals indexed and their dates of coverage, click here. Note that this is NOT a full-text database. However, our library has either print subscriptions or access through a full-text database to many of the journals covered by this index. For the ones not included, you will need to use Interlibrary loan.

Communication and Mass Media Complete has full text access for over 200 communication-related titles. This database originated with the acquisition and subsequent merging of two popular databases in the fields of communication and mass media studies -- CommSearch (formerly produced by the National Communication Association (NCA)), and Mass Media Articles Index (formerly produced by Pennsylvania State University). CommSearch offered bibliographic and keyword references to 26 journals in communication studies, with coverage extending to the inaugural issue of each -- some from as far back as the early decades of the 20th century. It also included cover-to-cover indices of NCA’s six journals (from their first editions to the present), and abstracts from their earliest appearance in NCA journals. Mass Media Articles Index provided citation coverage of over 40,000 articles related to mass media and published in over 60 research journals, as well as major journalism reviews, recent encyclopedias, and handbooks in the area of communications studies.

Communication and Mass Media Complete is an Ebsco database. One benefit of using an Ebsco database is that you can search select or all Ebsco databases at the same time. This can save valuable time in the long run. Do remember, though, that not all Ebsco databases use the same subject heading vocabulary.

JSTOR includes the full-text of journals from multiple academic disciplines. Access is provided to two JSTOR collections. The Arts & Sciences I Collection includes the complete back runs of 117 important journal titles in 15 disciplines, mainly in the social sciences and humanities. The Arts & Sciences II Collection is a multi-disciplinary collection of 122 titles and contains titles and disciplines that complement those in the Arts & Sciences I Collection. This Collection offers additional titles in disciplines such as History, Economics, and Asian Studies and core titles in new disciplines, such as Classics and Archaeology. African, Latin American, Slavic, and Middle Eastern Studies are among the new disciplines in this Collection.

NEWSPAPER INDEXES: In addition to the newspapers in Academic Universe (Lexis-Nexis), there are special indexes for newspapers. These are available as a special link on the Journals, Magazine, and Newspaper Articles page titled Search only for Newspaper Articles.

You may also need to locate literature from academic disciplines completely outisde of the Communication field. Possible subject areas to consider include: psychology, sociology, anthropology, medicine/allied health, and ethnic studies.

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Off-campus access: Databases accessed through the Library's Web site are licensed by the Library for the use of the University's students, faculty, and staff, and can be accessed from off-campus. If you are asked to login, you must enter your UW-Parkside email login and password. Your email account must already have been activated in one of the campus computer labs. If you've forgotten your password, you'll need to go to the help desk in the computer lab (lower level of the library) to have it reset.

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After finding a citation, unless the full-text is also offered, you'll need to track down the article by determining the answer to one of these questions:

• Does the Library subscribe to the journal in which the article appears?
• Is the journal available full-text in another database?

To find out if we own a journal in either print or electronic form, look for either the FindIt! button or a link that says something like "check your library for fulltext access." Clicking on the link/button will launch a new window with information on UWP's access to the journal you're looking for. If you only presented with information saying "request document via ILLIAD," you'll need to place an Interlibrary Loan request for the article because the library doesn't own it in either print or electronic form. If the library owns the article in fulltext in another of its databases, you'll find a link to the database and the article. If the library owns the item in print format, you'll find a link that will initiate a search for the journal in our library catalog. You'll then need to jot down the call number of the journal and head to the periodical stacks to locate your item. If you have questions about this process, make sure to see me!

For detailed information about the Library's print and full-text (electronic) journal holdings, consult the UWP Periodicals List (access from the library homepage), where you can look for both formats.

If a journal is not available either in print or full-text, you may obtain a copy of an article by ordering it through the Library's Interlibrary Loan service. The forms on that page allow you to request either books or articles by filling out a Web form. You cannot use the UW System Search feature to request journal articles. Leave at least 1-2 weeks for the interlibrary loan office to locate a copy of the article you want; remember that the request has to go to another library, where someone has to make a physical copy of the article, and send it to this campus.

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1. Use the reference list at the end of the source you have already found to identify additional potential sources. Any reputable scholar will list multiple sources relevant to the topic, as a way of demonstrating familiarity with prior literature. This is to your advantage, so make use of that list!

2. If you already have found a useful article, bear in mind that other relevant articles may well have been published in the same journal and possibly in the same issue. Go to the web site for that journal, and check for a list of table of contents for each issue (not all journal sites provide this, but many do.) Skim through the tables of contents to find additional relevant sources.

3. Some journals are now published electronically (or published simultaneously in print and electronic form), which means you may be able to access them directly using the Internet. Access to the articles often requires that you subscribe to that journal, which costs money. However, they often permit free access to one or more issues, which may include the one you want. Or, this may be a fast way to check the table of contents of a particularly relevant journal. Once you know of relevant articles, you can then check if UWP has the print or electronic version, and if not, request it through Interlibrary loan.

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citation: A record found in library catalogs and article indexes to aid in the locating of a particular item. Article citations usually include author of the article, title of article, source the article is found in (e.g. New York Times, Southern Journal of Communication), page numbers, date of publication, volume number, and issue number.

database: A collection of information organized in such a way that a user can quickly select desired pieces of information.

holdings: Date and volume range of journals to which the UWP library subscribes.

index: A collection of periodical article citations in which the citations are accessed in a number of ways-by keyword, subject, author name, title, etc..

journal: see peer-reviewed journal

location: Older issues of journals and magazines are shelved alphabetically in the "Journals & Magazines (Back issues)" area. Current issues of journals and magazines are shelved by call number in the "Journals & Magazines (Current issues)" area.

magazine: A popular publication on a topic, such as Time or People. Its audience will be the general public, and it will usually publish secondary rather than primary material (the person doing the research publishes it in a peer-reviewed journal; a reporter summarizes the findings for a magazine or newspaper, if it is deemed to be of interest to a wider public.) Occasionally magazines are published by scholars in order to distribute their results to a wider audience; Psychology Today and Science News are examples of this.

newspaper: Like a magazine, a newspaper is intended for a popular (general) audience rather than specifically for an academic audience. The major differences are that newspapers are usually published more often, cover a wider range of topics (especially what is labeled “news” or current events), in a different format (physically larger pages). With the advent of the Internet, the distinction between magazines and newspapers is disappearing.

peer-reviewed journal: This means the journal editor sends a submitted article out for review by people in the field who are known for their research, to learn their evaluation. Usually three reviewers are used. If two of them think the piece is worth publishing, it generally will be accepted; if two think it is not, it will be rejected. This means that peer-reviewed journals are assumed to publish better work, because the poor work has been screened out. Magazines and newspapers do not use this process, but use internal editors who are generalists (people who know a lot about many things) rather than specialists (experts in a particular field) to judge the quality of what they publish.

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When preparing a project, follow the recommendation of your instructor when you cite the sources you have used. Instructors may recommend one of the format styles described in these publications and Web sites.

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (Reference BF 76.7 .P83 2001) presents the APA style. Additional copies are available at the Reference Desk.

UWP Quick APA Reference Guide This guide from our Library provides a quick overview on APA reference lists and in-text parenthetical citations.

APA Documentation Style This Web page from University of Wisconsin-Madison advises students on using the Publication Manual.

The MLA handbook for writers of research papers (Reference Desk LB2369 .G53 1999) provides the recommendations of the Modern Language Association for formatting papers and references.

How to Cite References Using MLA Style This online guide, prepared by this library, is also available in paper format in the guide rack near the Reference Desk. 

A manual for writers of term papers, theses, and dissertations (Reference Desk LB2369 .T8 1996) presents the "Chicago style" for formatting papers and references.

UWP Quick Turabian's Reference Guide This guide from our Library provides a quick overview on Turabian style reference listsbibliographies, works cited sheets, and in-text parenthetical citations.

Documentation: Chicago Style, created by the UW-Madison Writing Center, presents the basics of using the Chicago Manual of Style / Turabian's Manual for Writers.

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