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Alternative Press Index Lesson

The Alternative Press Index covers many unique magazines and journals not found anywhere else. As stated earlier, every index uses selection criteria and has an editorial policy. Mainstream indexes, such as those produced by the H.W. Wilson Company, do not include magazines and journals from the more radical left or right. The Alternative Press Index on the other hand specifically indexes magazines and journals on the political, social, and economic left.

The MCTC library has both the print and electronic version of the Alternative Press Index. We will be focusing on the print version of the index in this lesson. If you are reading this lesson from a computer on the MCTC campus you can go to the electronic version of the index and explore how it works.

The Alternative Press Index is published quarterly with an annual cumulation. The Alternative Press Index selects magazines and journals to index that are not found in most mainstream indexes. Unfortunately the Alternative Press Index is not found in most college or public libraries. The reasons for this vary, but the fact that this important index is missing from most college and public libraries says something about the power of the dominant culture to shape academic debate.

The reason why we have not included an index to periodicals covering the radical right in this Tutorial is not because we are trying to censor such information, rather, there simply is no such index in publication. No one from the right has seen fit to produce an index comparable to the Alternative Press Index.

Like the H.W. Wilson Company indexes, the Alternative Press Index provides the researcher with information on how to use the index.

The Alternative Press Index is a great resource for information on our topic of the genetic engineering of food. This topic is extremely controversial and persons working in progressive organizations have much to say about the topic.

The Alternative Press Index does not use the same subject headings as the H.W. Wilson Company indexes. As a result we may have to approach our search a little differently. For example when looking for information in the Alternative Press Index we cannot use the H.W. Wilson subject heading "Bioengineered food." No such subject heading exists in the Alternative Press Index. However, we do find an entry for "Biotechnology" which refers us to the subject heading: "Genetically Engineered Food."

When we look up the subject heading "Genetically Engineered Food" we find the following:

None of these articles appeared in the H.W. Wilson indexes. These articles are unique to the Alternative Press Index. Most of these articles will also not be found in the WebPALS General Magazines Index which is produced by the Information Access Company. The Alternative Press Index provides unique information not found anywhere else. This information will assist us in writing our research paper and it will provide us with information from a different perspective.