Catalog tip – search for journals only

Sometimes you’re looking for a journal that has a really common title – the classic is “Time,” the weekly news magazine. If you look it up in the catalog using “title begins with” you get 43 results to wade through. But choose the second tab, labeled “Journals/Serials” and you can cut down the number of extraneous results – a search for “Time” this way gets only 10 hits, most of which are different versions of Time magazine.

The “Journals/Serials” tab also be very helpful when you want to find some titles of journals that cover your topic. For example, a subject keyword search for “neonatology” brings up a list of 16 journals that publish on the topic – very useful for browsing when you’re starting to research a topic.

This tab is also great for when you can’t quite remember the title of a journal – use keywords or subject keywords to try to narrow it down.

Written by Phoebe Acheson