Burke Publishing was founded in 1975 with the periodical index Access: The Supplementary Index to Periodicals. Its purpose was to supplement the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature – the most important index of popular periodicals in the United States.

Our index provided the first periodical indexing for major U.S. publications like the New York Review of Books, Rolling Stone and Playboy. Founded on an editorial commitment to a structured approach to research in popular periodicals, Access doesn't duplicate any indexing in the Readers' Guide and since 1999 no longer indexes periodicals which have been voted into the general indexes of the H. W. Wilson Company which are available over the internet via the WilsonWeb as well as being present in most libraries.

Since the founding of our periodical index, reference and book series have been introduced in the following subject areas: contemporary quotations (1976); children's literature (1983); cookery (1989); young adult biography and history (1997); poetry (1998); biography (2003); and fiction (2008). Our company has supplied indexing and editorial services to the periodical and book publishing industry since 1994.