 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!