Criminal Justice/Criminology Periodicals for a Four-Year Undergraduate Curriculum

Abstract

A number of factors enter into periodical selection for a library collection. Typically these include requests of individual faculty, the citation record of a particular journal, whether it has been included in a major selection source such as Magazines for Libraries, and whether it appears in important indices. Although all of these methods are useful, they can sometimes be inappropriate when a discipline is relatively new, is in the process of evolving academically, or when, it defies easy definition. Criminal justice studies is one such field. The purposes of this study are to review the development of the discipline and to recommend a basic list of journals that an academic library should subscribe to if its parent institution sponsors a program leading to a four-year degree in criminology or criminal justlce studies. A second category of suggested titles is also included for those institutions with two-year or graduate programs.