Information Types and Access
Types:
Periodicals are magazines, journals, and newspapers that are published at regular intervals during the year. Academic libraries have periodicals in physical and in online formats.
Magazines
Magazines provide general information on popular topics and current events, contain advertising, and do not have references. Example - Newsweek
Scholarly Journals
Scholarly journals analyze and report original research. They are written by scholars, include bibliographies, and cover various subject areas. Example – Journal of Economic History
Trade Journals
Trade journals discuss trends in a given industry. They are written by practitioners in a given field and include advertising. Example – Advertising Age
Newspapers
Newspapers provide current information about international, national, and local events. They report current news, are written by journalists and freelance writers, include advertising, and are usually short. Example – New York Times
Books
Books are written as fiction or nonfiction. Nonfiction books provide in-depth information on a subject, are often written by experts, and may include summaries of research. Library print books are organized by call number within library stacks. Libraries purchase ebooks that are electronically available on the web.
Encyclopedias
Encyclopedias contain factual articles on various subjects. General encyclopedias provide overviews on a wide variety of topics. Subject encyclopedias contain entries focusing on a specific field. Encyclopedias offer background information on a subject. They may be found in print or as ebooks.
Access:
Library Catalog
The Suffolk University Library Catalog identifies every item owned by the Suffolk Libraries (including the Sawyer Library, the Law Library, and the NESAD Library) and shows the item’s location through its call number. The catalog includes both print and online books, journals, magazines, newspapers, and multimedia.
Online Databases
Libraries purchase subscriptions to periodical/article databases which include citations, abstracts (summaries), and/or full-text articles found in magazines, journals and newspapers. These databases are available online. Subscription databases are not freely available to the public. When you search one of these databases, you are not searching the general Web. Articles and citations are searchable by topic or citation and are available online
