Finding Information Starter Guide: The basics: finding books, journals and databases

Print journals are arranged on the shelves in shelfmark order (alphabetically in Richview Library). 

Within each shelfmark, they are arranged alphabetically by title. For example:

Law journals are shelved at J340 (J for Journal, 340 for Law)

The Harvard Law Review is shelved at J340/HAR.

Generally, print journals are for reference only: they can be consulted or photocopied in the Library.

There are just a few titles that you can borrow. They are marked in the catalogue as Lending Journals.

Your reading list might contain an e-journal article like the one below:

Armstrong, K.A., 1998 ‘Legal Integration: Theorizing the Legal Dimension of European Integration’ Journal of Common Market Studies , 36(2) pp 155-175

This is what you need to know about this reference or citation:

Use OneSearch to search for the title of your journal article.

• Search for the title of the article e.g. "Legal Integration: Theorizing the Legal Dimension of European Integration" and use inverted commas round it.
   
• If we can provide a direct link to the online article you will get a result marked Journal Article. Click to access the online text.
   
• If your article title does not come up, or the click through fails to work properly, then search for the name of the whole Journal instead e.g. "Journal of common market studies", using inverted commas round it.
   
• If the journal is available online, you will then need to click to access the whole journal and navigate through to the year, volume and issue that you will have in your reference.
   
• For journals that are available in print only, you will need to find the print journal on the shelf, and then locate the right year and volume and within a volume the issue number in which your article is located: you should have all this information in your reference. In the example above you would look for the 1998 year, volume 36 and within that look for the content for issue 2.

If you would like to explore our eJournal collection, to see if we have a particular title or to choose a subject and see the range of titles we have available then you can use our filtered eJournal browse option to do this.

New students may not have encountered journals before. Ask Library staff at service points if you need help with understanding and finding journal titles or individual journal articles in print or online. You may also want to look at:

Newspapers

Journal abbreviations

• Use our databases interface to search for databases

• If you know the title that you want to use then key this into the top search box, and select the highlighted database title or in the full record displayed click on the Resource Home hot link to access and use the database.

• To see long lists of which databases we have for your subject area select one of the subjects offered, and then from the next listing select a more specific subject area and you will receive a list of databases that you can use.

To see a much briefer pre-selected set of Key databases for your subject, select a Library subject guide and move to the Journal Articles and Databases page: a concise list of database recommendations is then presented to you.

Databases are available via our OneSearch service.

OneSearch