KSL and Sex!

I should be up front and say that my sensational title is a bit misleading :-). This is an example of what to do when you're only getting part of the information. KSL, one of our local television and internet news sources, is a great place to find out about local events as they occur. However, in the name of getting the news to you as fast as possible, they're less likely to cite their sources or go into great detail. One recent day though, they actually (sort of) quoted an academic study on subscribers to internet sex sites. The gist of the blurb was that Utah is at the top of the heap in per capita subscribers. So how do I track down the original article? Their "citation" didn't mention an author ("a Harvard Business School Professor" and "some experts"), no publication date (but you can infer recent), volume or issue numbers -BUT! we actually were given the journal title: The Journal of Economic Perspectives. How do we track that down?

1. Go to the library catalog and look for the text box, "Journal/Newspaper title begins with:"
2. Type in Journal of Economic Perspectives and perform the search (hit enter).
3. First look for the journal title with "electronic resource" next to it and click that link.
4. Find the latest issue and look through the table of contents for something about "sex"
Note: I found for this particular journal, we only have the current 12 months available in print. The online versions are sometimes held back by publishers or we choose not to subscribe for financial reasons.

The moral of the story is that you really can find a source, even if you're only given a tiny bit of information. And here's a kudo to KSL for being academic (kinda)!

Here's the full citation (MLA style):
Edelman, Benjamin. "Markets: Red Light States: Who Buys Online Adult Entertainment?." The Journal of Economic Perspectives 23.1 (2009): 209-220.