Journals are academic magazines. They come out monthly or every few months and contain articles on different subjects. They are particularly useful for finding very up-to-date information or information on very narrow topics.
Printed journals can be found on our library catalogue – remember always to search for the title of the journal, (Victorian Poetry, in the example below) not the title of the article. Use the drop-down menu under the BROWSE option to search for a journal title:
Victorian Prosody: Measuring the Field. Martin, Meredith. Victorian Poetry, Summer2011, Vol. 49 Issue 2, p149-160, 12p
The catalogue would give you the shelf number of this journal, 821.05 VIC in this example, and you would then look for the particular year and volume and issue in the row of volumes of that journal on the shelf.
The most recent print journals are kept on Level Five. Bound volumes of journals dating back to 1965 are shelved in compactuses in the Basement of the Library (two floors below the Main Level).
Pre-1965 volumes are stored off campus and need to be requested from the Loans Desk.
However – there is often a better way.
Increasingly, our journals are available electronically.
Go to the library home page and select the JOURNALS option under the catalogue search box.
Type in the title of the journal – remember, the journal, not the article.
This will bring up a results screen with your journal. Click on it and the pop up will tell you which of our electronic databases have that journal, and what years of it they hold. If you click on the link to that database, you will be able to browse through that journal’s issues, by date, until you get the article you want, or simply search by keywords within that journal for the article title.
You can then just download it, print it out or e-mail it to yourself.
If you have trouble finding a journal, please ask for on our ask-a-librarian platform at https://libanswers.lib.uct.ac.za/
