Reference training

The University library subscribes to scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, and some other serial publications. Some are in print, while many others are available in databases. Archives of some periodicals are kept on the Atlanta campus in print, digital, or microfilm formats.

On this page, you will learn to search for Journals by title using the widget on the library homepage and how to search for individual articles when the patron has a full citation or partial information about the article.

On this page, we are using the term "journal" to include magazines and newspaper as well as academic journals.

To find out if we have a journal, or to find out what database contains articles from a specific journal, you can use the Journals tab on the library homepage.

1. Open the Journals search. (Alternatively, you can go to GIL Find and click on "Journals Search.")

2. Enter the name of the journal and search. This will open a search for that journal in the GIL-Find catalog.

3. Click on the title of the journal. (You may have to select from several with similar titles -- look at the publication information and print vs. online access.) This will open the item record for the journal.

4. The top of the record will include access options for print and some other options. (This one has more options than most!)

5. If you click on the Online Access link, or scroll down the record, you will find links to the databases containing the journal (if any) and the dates included. In this example, there are multiple options, but the dates vary in the different sources. Not visible here is that there may be different formats available, such as html vs. pdf. Also, databases vary in their methods to search within the journal.

"Show license" gives information about whether the articles can be shared via Interlibrary Loan.

6. Once in the database, you may search within the journal with various keywords.

Frequently, we are asked for assistance finding a specific journal article. The patron may have a complete citation or only some of the information. This section is to help you learn to field these types of questions.

The video below covers a basic strategy that works for most articles (in order from try first to try last)

1. Enter the article title in the Discover Search
2. Use the Discover Advance Search to add additional information such as author, journal, date, etc.
3. In the Journals search on the library homepage, go to the Citation Linker and enter the information you know.
4. If all else fails, place the request through an Interlibrary Loan request.

DOI/PMID Search (LibKey)

This search, located on the Journals search on the search widget on the homepage, allows you to search by DOI or PMID. If you have the DOI/PMID, you might want to try this search strategy first.

Example:

For this article, the DOI is listed in the citation. Sometimes DOIs are also listed in an article record or on the article itself.

To use LibKey:

1. Go to the Journals search on the search widget on the library homepage
2. Click on DOI/PMID search. This will open LibKey. Off campus you may need to log in.
3. Enter the DOI. (If working from a URL, leave off the https://doi.org part) and click the "Find DOI" button.
4. The results should list one or more options for accessing the article or direct you to Interlibrary Loan.

For more information, see Tricia Clayton's LibGuide:

Tips for Difficult Cases

When you can't locate the article in the citation:

• Try using quotation marks around the title if you are getting too many results
• Sometimes citations have misspellings or incorrect information, so try using LESS information in various combinations.
• Google Scholar searching is often more forgiving than database searching, so you may look there to gave more information, even if it is not accessible full text in Google Scholar. (And sometimes it IS full text!)
• Sometimes if you ask the patron where they got the information, you can go back to the original source and see if there is a clue there: Possibly the patron has mixed up the article title and the journal title, or the author's first and last names. There may be additional information, such as a DOI.
• Try searching for the journal by journal title, then searching within the journal.

Troubleshooting and Help Desk tickets

When you have citation, and it seems like we *should be able to get an article, but it's just not opening, try some tips from the Electronic Resources folks. Have the patron:

• Double check that we have access to the journal for the dates listed.
• Try a different browser
• Try clearing the cache/history

If this doesn't work, use the information you've gathered and the Authentication questions to complete a Library Help Desk ticket. (Patrons cannot complete this form themselves; you need to do it on their behalf.