Collection Development Manual > Libraries & collections > Central Library > Periodicals
Periodicals
- Periodicals
The Periodicals collection supports and broadens the collections in other sections of the library. It provides current leisure and informational reading on all topics for a wide variety of library users. The collection is as old as the library itself, and includes many titles that run back to the 1800s: journals in fields like art and Pacific Northwest history as well as popular titles in fashion, lifestyle, home keeping, and hobbies. Different periodicals are treated differently by the library: some are of long-term interest for their historical perspective and research value, and are retained in the long term, while others are of limited or short-term interest and use or are largely valuable for their currency, and are only kept for a few days, weeks, or months.
Some areas of particular focus in the Periodicals collection are: Portland, Oregon, and Pacific Northwest history and lifestyle, current events and news, consumer publications, special interest magazines (such as magazines on cooking and various hobbies), general business titles, and newspapers. The library strives to provide significant Portland neighborhood and Oregon city and town newspapers, and papers from larger cities in nearby states such as California, Washington, and Idaho. In the future, the library would like to increase the depth and breadth of its newspaper collection, most particularly by providing back issues of indexed Portland newspapers in microform and electronic format. Currently, the collection of newspapers and magazines in languages other than English is slowly growing.
The Periodicals collection includes a large number of periodicals indexes, which provide subject access to newspaper and magazine articles. Some of these cover periodicals published as far back as the 1800s. The library produced its own index to local newspaper articles (covering the years roughly 1930-1987), which is available in microfiche form in the Periodicals room (and in the original card file in the Humanities Rooms).
The Periodicals collection is used heavily by the general public, including high school and college students and independent learners. For many of these users, the Periodicals collection is valuable because of its currency. The most popular areas are lifestyle and news/current events magazines, consumer magazines, local and national newspapers, hobby titles and specialty magazines. The collection is also used by authors, journalists, historians, genealogists, and other researchers, as it contains some items that are not available in any other library in the state.
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Many periodicals are also available in electronic form in the library's Digital Resources Collection. One important way in which the Digital Resources collection complements the Periodicals collection is that its databases and indexes provide indexing (and in some cases, full text access) to magazine, newspaper, and journal articles. The library's original card file index to local newspaper articles is kept in the History collection in the Humanities room at Central Library; a microfiche copy is also available at Gresham Library.