 Hi, my name is Russell, and I'm a librarian at the University of Alabama. This video is the fourth in a series about the MLA International Bibliography, which contains accessible scholarly research pertaining to literature, language, linguistics, and folklore. It is the go-to resource for finding articles about these subjects specifically, with narrowly tailored results from the premier journals in these fields. In this video, we'll focus on the MLA Directory of Periodicals, which organizes all of the information about the journals that fall within the scope of the MLA IB. You can use the Directory of Periodicals to locate journals based on name, subject, or description, and to browse through journal articles based on volume and issue number. Now usually, when we are searching through databases, we are trying to find relevant articles based on their content, like what's it about? But what if we tried to find relevant articles based on their form, like how is it arranged? For journal articles, the way they are traditionally organized are in issues within volumes of journals. You can search for an article based on what journal volume and issue they're published in, which has the advantage of finding similar articles that might be published alongside it. Let's start that searching by navigating to the MLA Directory of Periodicals, which is under the tab Browse Periodicals on the MLA IB's main page. Since the journals are initially arranged alphabetically, I can click through pages of results until I find a journal that interests me, or I can search for a journal directly if I know the title. I'll type in Linguistic Inquiry, which is a well-known journal in the field of linguistics. I can then click on the name to find out more about the publication details. Now there are several pieces of metadata to especially pay attention to. One, obviously, is the scope and subjects of the journal to get a sense of what types of articles are accepted and published. Second, the date when it was first published and how many times it's published per year. This gives you a sense of how many volumes of this journal are published and how many issues are typically within each volume. Third, check to see if it's marked as peer reviewed so you can trust its reliability. Also, check to see if it's actively indexed so you know whether this journal is still publishing or not. Finally, for those interested in submitting to a journal and not just reading it, see the fields for submission details and submission requirements. Alright, let's say I wanted to find articles from this journal within a certain time period. I'll click on Search within this publication and it will take me to the Advanced Search screen. Under the Publication Date option, I'll limit the search to articles published between the start of 1992 and the end of 1993. After hitting Search, I'll get a list of articles published within those two years. If I only want articles published in a specific volume and issue, I can take note of the results and enter the volume and issue number that I want to browse through into the Advanced Search boxes. What if I don't know the name of a journal but I want to find a journal that covers certain topics? This would be a useful thing to know if you want to immerse yourself in a discipline or a broader scholarly idea. You can do this by browsing by subject and description, by entering a search term like sexuality, you can locate different journals that have the term in its subject field or its description. If I select a journal such as GLQ, a Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, I can add it to my search and then I can add other journals too so that I have a broader selection of articles. Once I conduct the search, I can use the Advanced Search boxes to refine and get more specific, one example being articles within these journals written by a single author. That's all for now. Thanks for watching. If you have further questions about the MLA International Bibliography, you can call us, email us, or visit ask.lib.ua.edu to ask a librarian.