CD Rom and online abstracts

• You need to consult the list of periodical indexes available in the library you are using to identify one or more indexes that will cover the type of information you require.
• Secondly you need to decide whether you only want articles available in the library you are using. If you want a list of articles available at any library, see the last paragraph below.
• If you only want articles in stock at the specific library you are using then the next step is to match one or more periodical titles in this library that are covered by the index. Why? These indexes cover the periodical literature of the world. The library you are using will only have a minute fraction of those titles in stock - if any. This means that when you do a search on a topic, you may identify many useful articles only to establish that none of those periodicals are in stock at your library. To match titles from your library with the titles on the index is a tedious task, but will eliminate much frustration later on.
• You are now ready to consult the index by combining the title(s) of the journal that you want to search and the keywords for the topic and print the results. The result of this search will be a list of articles in your library (provided that the issue of that particular title is not missing from your library's stock).
  Please note that you can only combine the title of the journal and the topic when you use an index on CD-ROM. You cannot combine these search elements in a printed index. Electronic indexes therefore provide better search functions.
• If you want a list of articles available at any library you can do the search by topic without limiting the result to a specific title. Do the search and print the result.

• Next you have to separate the list into two sections: one section with the articles from journals in your library and the other section with articles that need to be obtained from other libraries.
• You will require one further step and that is to consult the Interlibrary Loans department of the library to obtain the articles from other libraries, if this service is available to you.