"journal or "article"

A common source of confusion at the beginning of doing research is simply mixing up the terms "journal" and "article." Journals are a kind of periodical like a magazine, that comes out periodically, say once a month, or every other month... The difference between journals and magazines is that journals are scholarly, something your professor might publish an article in for example. The "journal" is the bigger thing; you find articles in the journal.

Magazines are more popular, like something you might buy in the check out line at Publix. Think Better Homes and Gardens, People, and Time magazine.

The confusion is that sometimes we have people saying things like "I want journals on the death penalty." What they really mean is that they want articles from journals that are on the subject of the death penalty. The thing is that if you want articles, go to an article database, like Academic Search Complete or JSTOR; if you do happen to want to know where a certain journal is, that's a different question, and the answer is to go to the journal listing on our home page to see what database it is in, or go to the second floor where we have 178 in paper format, including newspapers.  Hopefully this all makes senses, but if not, just ask one of us for help.