Interpreting Online Catalog Records for Journals

In the UIUC Library system, it is common for a departmental library (like Education and Social Science) to keep recent issues (usually the last 5-10 years) of journals, and then transfer them to Main Stacks. This can make interpreting catalog records for journals challenging. How can you tell where a particular volume of a journal is actually located? This primer aims to assist you in figuring this out.

1. The first step is to search the online catalog for your journal title. If you know the exact title (e.g. The Journal of Teacher Education), the quickest and most accurate method is usually to do a quick search and select "Start of Magazine/Journal Title" under the Search By options, as shown below. (Make sure you leave out the "the" in the title!)
2. After clicking Search, you will be presented with a list of results: It is not uncommon for there to be more than one record for a single title, as in the case above. There are no hard and fast rules for determining which one is the main record for the journal you're looking for, but a couple rules of thumb:
   • If one of the records reports "multiple holdings," it is more likely to be the main record ("multiple holdings" indicates that the title is housed in more than one library, which is usually the case for entire runs of a print periodical).
   • Look for a match in the "Full Title" column rather than the "Title" column--the former is usually more precise than the latter.
   In the above screenshot, it is clear that one of the records is for a microform version of the title, so we'll want to look at the other one.
3. Clicking the Multiple holdings link takes you to the actual record for The Journal of Teacher Education. The entire record can't be captured in a single screenshot, so here is the first part: This initial screen gives information for the periodical in general, including its frequency and its subject headings. The big red e indicates that the title is available electronically. (You would need to follow the link to determine the date range of the electronic coverage; for this example, we'll assume that the volume we need predates the electronic coverage.)
   
   Scrolling down, the next screen of information is as follows: Once again, we see the big e indicating electronic coverage. Looking down further, we finally get to information on the holdings of the print volumes. The Note indicates that the Education and Social Science Library has the last ten years of this title. The specific volumes held by the library are listed below this note. Please note that this date range only covers bound volumes, and that periodicals are often not bound until they have been in the library for over a year. So, issues from the current year are often not included in the online record, but that doesn't mean the library doesn't have them!
   
   So what if you need a volume--say, v37--that is not from the last 10 years? Scrolling down still further to the bottom of the record, we see the following:
   This tells us that Volume 43 and earlier volumes are in Main Stacks (if we scrolled to the very bottom of this screen, we would see Volume 1 at the end of the list). Note the Status area of the record--this tells us that two volumes are checked out, and two are missing. Checking this information can save you an unnecessary trip to the stacks if the volume you need isn't there! If the volume you need does happen to be checked out or missing, Interlibrary Loan can usually obtain an article photocopy from another institution within a week or so.