How to Use Indexes & Abstracts

There are many common-use indexes and abstracts. Some of them are: Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature, New York Times Index, Book Review Index, Education Index, General Science Index, Social Sciences & Humanities Index, Biological Abstracts, and Criminal Justice Abstracts. Most of them are very useful tools.


I will use the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature as an example to show you how to use indexes since it is very popular.

In-Print Version:

The Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature is an index to popular periodicals (magazines or scholarly journals) published in the U.S. and Canada. Its entries are organized by either subject headings or authors.

Based on the information provided by the J. Murrey Atkins Library of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, it includes "current events and news, fine arts, fashion, education, business, sports, health and nutrition, consumer affairs, and others. It is useful for tracking down primary source materials from the late 19th and entire 20th centuries" (http://library.uncc.edu/knowledgebase/question.php?q=246&dept=library).

According to the Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Readers%27_Guide_to_Periodical_Literature), the "Readers' Guide has been published regularly since 1901 by the H. W. Wilson Company, and is a staple of public and academic reference libraries throughout the United States; a retrospective index of general periodicals published from 1890 to 1900 is also available.

Originally, The Readers' Guide was published on a biweekly basis, with later issues incorporating the previous content in larger copies until the index for the entire year was published."


Readers' Guide is arranged alphabetically either by subject headings or authors.

And, subject headings are always in BOLD UPPERCASE type. In this example, the subject heading is ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Entries for articles which have been published in magazine or journals are located beneath the subject heading (http://www.dowling.edu/library/images/readersguide.pdf).

Abreviations are used in entries. "All abreviations are listed in the front of the Reader's Guide books" (http://www.esc.edu/esconline/across_esc/writerscomplex.nsf/0/B820F55F68A8843C852569FA006B0389?opendocument).

The printed version does not provide the content (full-text) of the articles. Its user needs to look for the articles himself.



Online Version:



The H. W. Wilson Company
provides online version of the
Readers' Guide and enhanced it with "searchable full text of articles from some 215 journals as far back as 1994". The online version also contains "high quality indexing of over 400 periodicals as far back as 1983" and "in-depth abstracts written by professionals". (http://www.hwwilson.com/databases/readersg.htm).


Graphical content are also available for some articles. In addition, an additional database "Readers' Guide Retrospective: 1890 -1982" is also available.


The following shows you how to use the online version. Since the database (indexes, abstracts, and full text) is not a free resource. You need to use the SJSU library (http://www.sjlibrary.org/research/databases/index.htm) as a path to have the access. There are two steps: login and search.

1. Video Clip: Login to the SJSU King Library




2. Video Clip: Do the search