Using Infotrac to Find Better Sources

InfoTrac can be used very specifically as well; for instance, you can use InfoTrac to find articles from a specific magazine or journal if you know which issue you need. One way to perform this search is to use the Advanced search functions and select to search only the periodical in question (such as National Geographic or Science News.)  Another way is to search the publications index for the periodical, and then search by issue if you know what issue you need. This was recently helpful for a class we had–they are required to actually use the magazine, regardless of how they found it.  Using the InfoTrac search options, they could easily locate the issue, article, and page numbers, so that when they requested the magazine, they could find the information.  The downside, at least for National Geographic, is that their index only goes back to 1977; the paper index from 1889-1989 is then helpful, if your library has it.  Ours has both the paper catalog and magazine issues back to 1922.  Using Infotrac this way is much simpler than going to the individual magazine’s websites to use their archive searches; using the archives on Nat. Geo. online can be very frustrating, as many articles are not full text.  ScienceNews.org is a little more friendly, but some content may still be blocked if you are not an online subscriber. Try it out!