GLOSSARY

Abstract  -  a brief summary of an article, conference paper, or book

Acronym  -  a new word or pronounceable and hence memorable name coined from the first or first few letters or parts of a phrase or compound term (HUD for Housing and Urban Development).

Almanac  -  annual publication that contains calendars, facts, statistics, and other miscellaneous information.

Annotated Bibliography  -  a list of works on a particular topic, with each entry accompanied by a note intended to explain, describe, or evaluate the publication.

Bibliography  -  a list of citations for books, periodical articles, government documents or other materials.

Biography  -  a written account of a person’s life or the group of literature concerned with people’s lives.

Boolean Logic/Operators  -  words such as AND, OR, and NOT that are used to combine search terms to broaden or narrow the results of a search.

Citation  -  information that fully identifies a publication; usually featuring the author, title, name of work, publisher, and date.  Page and volume numbers plus other information may be included.

Controlled Vocabulary  -  a set of standard terms specifically chosen to describe the contents of items found within a database.

Compendium  -  a brief account or summary of a particular subject.

Copyright  -  legal protection of ownership of a creative work by the work’s artist, writer, or photographer.  Provides the copyright owner the exclusive right to authorize reproduction or other uses of the work for a specific period of time.

Database  -  a collection of information arranged into individual records to be searched by computer.

Descriptors  -  a word or a group of words used as a subject to describe the content in books, articles, and other materials for the purpose of indexing or organizing these items by topic.

Dictionary  -  a book composed of an alphabetical listing of words with their definitions that often include pronunciation and usage.

Directory  -  a systematically organized list of persons, businesses, organizations, or associations that provides addresses, affiliations, telephone numbers, and similar information.

Encyclopedia  -  a reference source containing informational articles that provide brief but thorough overviews of a range of topics; usually arranged by subject with an index volume to help locate subjects that do not have their own alphabetical entry.

Field  -  a part of a record used for a particular category of data.  For example, TI represents the title field or AU for the author.

Full-text  -  refers to the entire article located in a database that may be printed or downloaded to a disk.

Handbook  -  a collection of information on a subject, meant to be a concise and authoritative reference.

Hits  -  the number of results that are yielded by a database search.

Index  -  a systematic guide to the contents of a file, book, document, or group of document in an arrangement that represents the contents, references, page numbers, etc.  

Internet  -  a worldwide network of computers that can be accessed via the campus computer network.

Journal  -  a periodical containing articles or other material such as reports, proceedings, or transactions issued by a society, an organization, or an institution.

Keywords – significant terms that are utilized to perform an electronic database search. 

Magazine  -  a periodical publication for general interest such as news, current events, and popular materials.

Microforms (microfilm, microfiche)  -  documents, often ones that are bulky or likely to deteriorate rapidly, which  have been photographed and reduced in size to minimize storage space and for preservation.

Newspaper  -  a serial issued at stated, frequent intervals (daily, weekly, or semi-weekly), containing news, opinions,  advertisements, and other items of current, often local interest.

Corgan Library’s Online catalog  -  a computerized catalog that contains bibliographic  records of the King’s College Library collection.

Peer reviewed  -  refers to a scholarly journal article or other work which has been submitted to a process of evaluation by one or more experts in the subject  to determine whether it is worthy of publication.

Periodical  -  publication that is issued at least twice a  year, including journals, magazines and newspapers. Current periodicals are those that have recently arrived.  Bound periodicals are back issues that have been covered with a binding and placed on the shelves.

Periodical index and abstracts - a list of articles that have appeared in journals, magazines, or newspapers and feature author, title, name of periodical, volume, pages and date of publication.  Abstracts are indexes that also contain summaries of the content of the article.

Phrase searching  -  search more than one keyword exactly as written usually by enclosing the terms in quotes to form a phrase.  Sometime called a "character string."  ex. "Bruce Springsteen" or "call of the wild"

Plagiarism  -  copying or closely imitating the work of another writer or composer for the purpose of passing the results off as original work.

Popular magazine -  publications targeted for mass market sale at newsstands, supermarkets, or chain stores.

Primary source  -  a manuscript, record, or document providing original research or documentation.

Root word – the fundamental part of a word upon which other letters can be added to form new words.

Scholarly journal  -  see Peer Reviewed.

Search strategy  -  a series of steps for planning and preparing an efficient way to collect pertinent information on a given topic.  

Secondary source  -  materials or sources that contain information that has been cited, translated, or based upon another primary or original source.

Subject encyclopedia  -  an encyclopedia devoted to a specific subject or field of study.

Subject heading  -  words or headings assigned to books and articles and used to index these items by topic.  Determining the correct headings for a specific database or catalog is an important part of effective research.

Synonym  -  a word whose meaning is the same as that of another.

Thesaurus  -  a reference book that provides synonyms and antonyms, as well as broader and narrower terms for vocabulary.  

Truncation  -  typing a special symbol (usually an *) at the end of a root word to retrieve all possible spellings or ending variations.

World Wide Web  -  a client-server information system that uses the Internet to access computers containing millions of hypertext documents.

Yearbook  -  an annual compendium of facts and statistics on a particular subject for the preceding year.