 This is List Podcast number three. How to find journal articles for your assignments by Emma Tajinski. For further details go to www.cumbria.ac.uk-list. This podcast provides a brief introduction to finding electronic journal articles for your assignments. There are several reasons that you should use journals in your work and when carrying out your own research. Firstly, using journals will allow you to find current, up-to-date information for your assignments. Unlike the majority of textbooks, they tend to cover very specific subject areas, so are ideal for really getting to grips with the topic you are researching. Because they are published regularly, they contain the newest cutting-edge research and academic debate. In addition to this, academic journals are peer-reviewed. This means that they have been checked for accuracy by experts in the field before publication, so the quality of information is likely to be high. Referencing good quality journal articles in your assignments can also help you get higher marks and improve the standard of your own work. Each article has an abstract or summary at the beginning. These can be really useful when deciding which articles to read, as they allow you to get a feel for what the articles are about before you read them. Also useful are the bibliographic references at the end of each article. These can be invaluable when trying to find further information on your topic and can lead you to other related articles. If you already know which article you want, you can use the A-to-Z journal list to search for the specific journal that you need. From the list website, select Search the library, then click on the link to journal's A-to-Z list. You will need to select on-the-campus or off-campus logon, depending where you are at the time. You will need to search for the title of the journal itself, not the title of the article. If you are trying to find a reference that appears in a reading list or bibliography, the title of the journal will be the bit in italics. Enter the journal title in the search box and press search. If the library has access to it, it will appear in the results list. Sometimes there are several different sources available for a single title, but not all will cover the same dates. Check which year you require before selecting the relevant link. You should see a list of all the dates held by the provider you have selected. From here, you can click on the relevant year and issue number and search within the appropriate issue to find the article you need. Alternatively, you may wish to do a more general search to find out what has been published on the topic you are researching. To do this, you will need to use the e-resources link on the list website. From the main page of the list website, select Search the library, then click on the link to e-resources. You will see a list of all the electronic databases that the universe is subscribed to and also a link to e-resources by subject. Selecting this option will allow you to see which databases are most relevant to the subject you are studying. Some of the databases contain full text articles, whilst others, known as indexing databases, will show you abstracts of what is available, but not link you to the full text. If you are doing preliminary research and wish to find out what kind of thing has been published on a particular topic, it is best to use indexing databases, as these cover the widest range of journals. Otherwise, make sure you select one that is listed as full text. A good place to start your search is with the university's discovery service. This is called Quest and allows you to search all of the university's full text databases and resources from a single screen. You can access Quest from the list's website. Searching from the basic search screen is likely to return a large number of results, but there are several ways that you can narrow these down and make them easier to work through. Clicking on Subject will give you a list of related or alternative search terms that you can add in to the search you have performed. This will help you retrieve more specific and relevant results. Clicking on geographic location will allow you to limit the results to articles that originate from a particular country. Sliding the date bar will allow you to limit the results to articles that have been published recently, so you might want to think about how up-to-date the information you use needs to be. It is important to choose your search terms carefully, as they will affect the type and amount of articles that are retrieved by the database. If your search results do not include the type of articles you require, you may need to think of alternative words for the topics you are researching, or combine several search terms using the Advanced Search feature. Finally, if you are unable to find the full text of the article you need, you can request it via interlibrary loan. There is a small charge for this, so check whether or not the article you require is likely to be useful by reading the abstract carefully. Interlibrary loan request forms are available from all campus libraries, and more information can be found on the LIS website. For further details on this podcast and to listen to others in the series, please visit www.cumbria.ac.uk-LIS.