Library FAQ

Some research areas do not produce a lot of scholarly journals. These include fields like fire fighting, sound equipment sales, hotel management, etc., which produce trade journals or professional journals, instead. Trade and professional journals are:

• written by experts, but these are usually not people with PhDs who are working in academia; instead, they are experts who are employed in the trade or profession
• written for experts, but again, the readers are not necessarily scholars; they are individuals working in that trade or profession
• not peer reviewed or editorially reviewed; instead, they are more like magazines in that they have editors.

You have a few options for locating articles from these types of sources:

1) Visit the website of a professional association affiliated with your field of study, and see what publications they feature. For example, International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) features Fire Fighter Quarterly Magazine. If you are able to read articles via their website, great.

If not, you may search E-Journals A-Z on the library homepage to see if our library subscribes to that publication.

2) Search a library database in your field of study. To do this, click Subject Guides on the library homepage, select the guide affiliated with your field of study, and view databases listed on the landing page of that guide. Then:

• Select a database, and click the Advanced Search option (usually next to or below the basic search box).
• Scroll through the advanced search features until you find Source Type, Publication Type, or something similar.
• Then, scroll through the options until you see Trade Journal. Click that, enter you keywords in the search boxes above, and click Search.
• If the database you choose, does not offer Trade Journals as an option, you might select a different database from the subject guide list and try again.