Skip to Main Content

Databases and Collections: Periodicals

Periodicals (newspapers, magazines, and journals) are a great source for current information. They are published on a regular, recurring basis, allowing information to be reported quickly.

Most articles in these collections are written by professional journalists and/or subject experts, for publications that strive to protect their reputations for credibility.

Finding Articles with Research Databases

Online research databases let you find articles from many thousands of publications. Some databases cover a wide range of topics, while others focus on specific fields like science, health, and education.

The Primo search tool finds articles from most of these databases. Or you can search these databases individually with more search options. See Which Way to Search box below for why to do it one way or the other.

ABI/INFORM Collection
Articles and reports on business and economics.
EBSCOhost
Approximately 60 general and specialized databases. We often recommend:
Hawaiʻi Newpaper Index
An index of the Honolulu Advertiser, Star-Bulletin, & Star-Advertiser. Good for articles from 1989-1998. For 1999 and later, use ProQuest USW Newsstream. HNI is not a full-text database. Not searched by the Primo system.
Hawaiʻi Pacific Journal Index
An index of periodicals published in Hawaiʻi and the Pacific. HPJI is not a full-text database. Not searched by the Primo system.
Issues & Controversies
Extensive coverage of hundreds of today's hot topics, with analysis and related resources. Not searched by the Primo system.
JSTOR
A digital library of academic content in many formats and disciplines.
Opposing Viewpoints
Covers today’s hottest social issues. This cross-curricular research tool supports science, social studies, current events, and language arts classes.
ProQuest US West Newsstream
Includes the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and Hawaii Business (since 2016). Also Honolulu Advertiser (1999-2010) & Honolulu Star-Bulletin (1996-2010).
ScienceDirect
Journal articles and book chapters from Elsevier publications.

Finding Older Articles from The Honolulu Advertiser and Honolulu Star-Bulletin

The Index to the Honolulu Advertiser and Honolulu Star-Bulletin is a printed index of articles from 1929–1994, located with our microfilm collection. The Periodicals List shows available microfilm.

Online Publications

Chronicle of Higher Education
News for college and university faculty and administrators
The New York Times
Our access to the New York Times newspaper works differently than most of our subscriptions. You need to register for a NYT account through our link. More about the New York Times, including instructions for creating your account. Primo has very limited coverage of NYT content.
Science
Online version of the world's leading outlet of science news, information, and cutting-edge research

Virtual Browsing Collections

These collections allow you to read through issues of magazines on a tablet or computer.

OverDrive

Individual magazines from the library's OverDrive e-book service. Includes more than 4500 publications. Note that these magazines are not listed in the library catalog, and articles from these magazines are not searched by the Primo system.

Android and iOS apps are available.

Flipster (back issues only)

We no longer receive new content from Flipster, but we still have access to issues that were published while our subscription was in effect. Select the magazine you want to view, then click the "All issues" link in the top right to see the available issues. Not searched by the Primo system.

Android and iOS apps are available.

Enhanced Free Databases

There are free databases that have limited or no full-text content, but when accessed through EBSCOhost, are able to retrieve articles from our other databases.

Similarly, accessing Google Scholar through this link gives you access to otherwise-unavailable licensed content from our databases.

A-Z Databases List

See the full list of our databases and e-resources: A-Z Databases

Search Scope Options:

Articles
Search many of the library's databases.
Journal Search
See if we subscribe to a particular periodical or have access through our databases.

Newspaper Articles: In Primo, newspaper articles are searched separately from other articles. In the Primo search screen, choose Newspapers at the top of the search screen, or choose Newspaper Search from the bottom of a results list.

The Primo system does not cover Issues & Controversies or OverDrive Magazines.

Individual Periodicals

We subscribe to some periodicals in paper and online form, in addition to those in our databases and the OverDrive package. See the list of individual periodicals.

Print periodicals, and microfilm of some older periodical issues, are located on the upper level.

Which Way to Search?

The Primo multi-database search system allows to you search in one place to get articles from most of our different research databases. You'll probably get slightly different results than if you search the individual databases directly, but you'll usually still find the information you need.

If you go to the individual databases, you might have search options that you don't have in Primo. For example, in an EBSCOhost database, you can choose to see only magazine articles, instead of long complicated journal articles. You can also choose to see only articles that are shorter or longer than a certain number of pages, or you can choose to see only cover stories.

Definitions of Terms

Scholarly and Peer-Reviewed Journals

Scholarly journals (also called academic journals) are used by researchers to report on their work. Some scholarly journals use the peer review process, in which independent subject experts carefully review submitted articles to determine which articles get published. Articles are usually quite long and detailed, are written at an expert level, and have a list of references (i.e., works cited) at the end.

Finding articles: The Primo search tool, EBSCOhost databases, and ProQuest's ABI/INFORM have filters that let you search for articles published in scholarly or peer-reviewed journals. All journals in ScienceDirect:are peer-reviewed. For more information and instructions, see the Scholarly and Peer-Reviewed Journals & Articles guide.

What is Full Text?

Full-Text means that the complete article – not just some information about the article – is available from a particular research database. The term can also refer to the articles themselves. The article is shown either in the form of a web page (i.e., HTML) or as a PDF file that resembles the printed article.

What is an Index Database?

A periodical index database allows you to find information about periodical articles, but it does not include the actual articles. You'd have to find a library that subscribes to the periodical to read the actual article. They are often produced by government agencies or educational institutions as a public service. Examples include the Hawaiʻi Pacific Journal Index and the Hawaiʻi Newspaper Index.

More About Periodicals

See the next page (More About Periodicals) for information about:

  • How citation-only and full-text articles are retrieved in our different databases
  • How to find articles that you see in a references list at the end of a scholarly article or book
  • Suggestions for obtaining articles that are not available full-text in our databases