Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature Retrospective (1890-1982) Brings the Past into the Future of Research

The Cheng Library is pleased to announce it has acquired the online version of the "Retrospective" edition of the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, covering the years 1890 through 1982, and provided on the EBSCOhost search platform. First published in 1901 by the H.W. Wilson Company, the Readers' Guide served for over a century as the major subject index to popular general-interest periodicals published in the United States, and as such it offers broad access to a wide variety of subjects, with coverage of decades in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries that few other databases offer. Spanning 92 years, the database contains indexing for over three million articles from more than 550 leading magazines, and it supports searching by subject, publication, dates, journal, author, or article title, with links to full-text articles where these are available.

The Wilson Company was a pioneer of high-quality subject indexing for periodical literature, and the range of subjects accessible through the Readers' Guide is vast, including aeronautics, African-Americans, aging, astronomy, automobiles, biography, business, Canada, children, computers, consumer education, current events, education, environment, fashion, film, fine arts, food, foreign affairs, health, history, hobbies, home, journalism, leisure activities, medicine, music, news, nutrition, photography, politics, religion, science, sports, and television. Students and faculty conducting research on almost any historical topic from the period covered by the Readers' Guide will find the database a most valuable resource. So we bid goodbye to the stacks of "green books" that have served us well for so many years! Researchers who would still like to view the old printed can see digital scans of the volumes for the years 1904 through 1922 via the Hathi Trust.

Please contact Richard Kearney (x 2165) if you have questions about the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature Retrospective database.