Page 8: what are periodicals?
What is a periodical?
A periodical is different from a book in that it is a regular publication: it might appear every week, every fortnight, every month, each quarter or at least once a year. The individual issues published over a year form a volume which is normally cited with its number as well as the year. The year can be either a calendar year (running January to December), or an academic year (usually running from September to August). Newspapers are strictly speaking periodicals, as well as some books which appear on an annual basis, e.g. Whitaker's Almanac. You will also come across the terms magazine, journal and serial.
Normally in general-interest magazines each issue has its own pagination (page numbers), while in most scholarly journals the pagination continues from the first to last issue.
Today, many scholarly journals are also available on-line. Libraries can either purchase the print and electronic versions together, or they can opt to subscribe to just one of these formats. Sometimes libraries buy access to a 'bundle' of electronic periodicals through an 'aggregator', an agency that negotiates deals with a number of independent periodical publishers, and then offers a standardised selection of journals at a discounted price. These package deals have the additional benefit that all the journals are accessible, and searchable, through the same interface. However, as the aggregator negotiates new licences, or re-negotiates the existing ones, the range of journals included in such a deal can change without much advance warning.
For over a hundred years, microfilm and microfiche have been very popular for keeping long back runs of periodicals. They take up little space and, under the right storage conditions, are expected to last for around 500 years. This is less than paper (1,000 years), but certainly far longer than digital data which has to be actively migrated to current software and hardware every ten years or so. Microfilm and micro-fiche can only be read with the help of reader or reader/printer.
The periodicals collection at RAIUL
RAIUL libraries subscribe to approx. 300 periodicals in traditional hardcopy. A few popular ones are taken in both Richmond and Kensington, but on the whole the Library tends to purchase just one copy of most others. The current issues of most of them are first displayed on one campus before being sent for display to the other.
The largest on-line database the Library subscribes to is EBSCOhost, with, for example, the full-text of approx.2,050 periodicals in the 'Academic Search Elite' database, and 8,350 periodicals in the 'Business Source Premier' database. However, there are a large number of other journal databases on the Library's e-journals page.
Link to this page: http://www.richmond.ac.uk/s/981.aspx
