Library Research Tutorial
Definitions
Abstract
A brief summary, usually of an article, book, or chapter in a book.
Below are two abstracts from two journal articles as a result
of a search in the database, Academic Search Elite:
American Psychological
Association or APA
The APA web site says:
When editors or teachers ask you to write in “APA
style,” they do not mean writing style. They are referring
to the editorial style that many of the social and behavioral sciences
have adopted to present written material in the field.
Editorial style consists of rules or guidelines
that a publisher observes to ensure clear and consistent presentation
of written material. Editorial style concerns uniform use of such
elements as:
- punctuation and abbreviations
- construction of tables
- selection of headings
- citation of references
- presentation of statistics
- as well as many other elements that are a part
of every manuscript
The American Psychological Association has established
a style that it uses in all of the books and journals that it publishes.
Many others working in the social and behavioral sciences have adopted
this style as their standard as well.
APA's style rules and guidelines are set out in
a reference book called The Publication Manual of the American
Psychological Association.
Please note that when researchers talk about APA
style, they may be referring to APA's system of citations in text
and reference format. If you are unsure, you should clarify with
your instructor or editor how they define "APA style."
Bibliography
A list of sources referred to in a particular work. A list of the
books, articles of a specific author, or on a specific subject. Below
is a sample bibliography from the book Civil Rights Pioneer: A
Story About Mary Church Terrell, available on netLibrary:
Boolean Operators
Words that are used in electronic databases or electronic catalogs
to expand or limit the results of a search, including such words as
"and," "or," and "not."
Call Number
The combination of letters and numbers used to label each item and
give it a unique "address" on a library shelf. Materials
are arranged on the shelf by call numbers, so that titles on the same
subject are shelved together. The William Hessel Library uses the
Dewey Decimal Classification. Sample of Dewey Decimal Call Number
order:
Catalog
A file of records arranged systematically, listing all the books,
sometimes periodical titles, and other materials owned by a library.
For each cataloged title, there is a record in the catalog under the
author's name, title, and any subject terms that describe the contents
of the cataloged items. The William Hessel Library has an electronic
catalog, called Online
Catalog .
Citation
The complete information needed to find or identify a particular item.
For books, it includes the author's name,
title, publisher,
place of publication, and date
of publication. For periodical articles, it includes the author
and title of the article, plus the name of the magazine or journal,
the volume, date, and page numbers of the issue in which the article
appears. In the beginning pages of this book, shown below, you will
find the necessary information needed for a book citation::
 
Copyright
The definition below is from the Library's database, Oxford
Reference Online:
copyright Legal
authority protecting works of art, literature, music and computer
programs from reproduction or publication without the consent of the
owner of the copyright. Since the Universal Copyright Convention (1952),
works must carry the copyright symbol ((c)) followed by the owner's
name and the first year of publication. Computer software and programs
are protected in the US by the Copyright Act (1976) and Computer Software
Act (1980), and in the UK by the Copyright (Computer Software) Amendment
Act (1985). In the UK, the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988)
introduced the concept of ‘intellectual property’.
Descriptor
Another term for "subject heading," usually used in the
context of electronic databases. The two descriptors or subject headings
attached to the record below are Bullying
and School violence. These descriptors
identify what this article is about. They are linked, so that one
can click on the chosen descriptors and find all articles where that
descriptor has been assigned.
Dewey Decimal Classification
A classification system, developed by Melville Dewey, which uses a
division of numbers to designate the various classes of subjects.
Refer to Call Number definition.
Download
To copy information to a floppy computer disk, or to a computer's
hard disk.
Field
In an electronic database, a part of a record that contains a particular
type of data, such as a title, author, subject heading or descriptors,
or an abstract. Each record in a database is made up of "fields,"
and you may limit your search of a database to a particular field
or fields, to get more precise search results, or because you want
only the information that is in the field(s) you specify. Notice the
fields in bold lettering for this record. The cited record is from
Academic Search Elite on EBSCOhost. It is an article
of a book review from the magazine School Library Journal.
The following fields are: title, source,
document type, subject
terms, reviews & products,
people, abstract,
and ISSN.
Full-Text
The text of the article from a magazine or journal available electronically
via a computer.
Holdings
What a library owns. This is a record from the Online Catalog..
This is a book that the Hessel Library holds in the collection.
HTML
Definition from the Library's database, Oxford
Reference Online:
HTML noun
[mass noun] Computing Hypertext Markup Language, a standardized system
for tagging text files to achieve font, colour, graphic, and hyperlink
effects on World Wide Web pages.
Icon
A small symbol, or picture, on a computer screen that represents a
computer operation, or a file of data.
Index
(1) Some online databases, for example, only index or cite the source
but do not provide the full-text information. One can search by keyword
or topic, but the search results will only contain indexed information.
(2) An index in a book, for example, that lists the topics located
within the book, with page numbers.
Interlibrary
Loan (ILL) (Link to the Interlibrary Loan web page at the
Hessel Library web site)
Interlibrary lending and borrowing services that give you access to
materials that are not owned by the William Hessel Library.
Internet
The international network of computers around the world which provides
access to E-mail, gophers, the World Wide Web, remote logon, and FTP.
ISBN
This definition is from the database, Oxford
Reference Online:
ISBN abbreviation
for
international standard book number, a ten-digit number assigned to
every book before publication, recording such details as language,
provenance, and publisher.
ISSN
This definition is from the database, Oxford
Reference Online:
ISSN abbreviation
for
international standard serial number, an eight-digit number assigned
to many serial publications such as newspapers, magazines, annuals,
and series of books.
Journal
A periodical (magazine) which contains scholarly articles, such as
reports of original research, published by a professional group or
non-commercial publisher. Many journals contain many of the same features
as "magazines" (see below), such as book reviews and letters
to the editor, and they may not contain advertising for consumer products.
Keyword
A word or words used to search for information in a database or search
engine. In a database the keyed in words would be searched in several
different fields - author, title, subject, abstract.
Library of Congress
From the database, Oxford
Reference Online:
Library of Congress.
Established in 1800, the Library of Congress is the world's largest
and most comprehensive research institution. Although never the official
national library of the United States, it has been run continuously
by the federal government's legislative branch and serves all the
functions of a national library, including copyright repository (since
1870) and reference service to Congress and other branches of government.
A fire destroyed the library's core collections in 1814, but it recovered
by acquiring the great library of Thomas Jefferson the following year.
The institution grew slowly through the nineteenth century, obtaining
collections of books, pamphlets, maps, manuscripts, newspapers, pictorial
materials, and broadsides through purchase, exchange, and donation.
In addition, the nation's earliest documents and the papers of the
founders (George Washington, Jefferson, James Madison, and others)
were transferred to the library from the State Department.
With the appointment of the library's first professional administrator,
Herbert Putnam, in 1899, the collections grew dramatically, numbering
over 100 million items in three buildings a century later. The library
became a leader in cataloging, description, and technology, first
by distributing its catalog cards to libraries worldwide, and then
with the development of the machine-readable cataloging (MARC) format
that became the international standard. Its American Memory page on
the Worldwide Web contains images of thousands of items from the collections,
giving researchers instant off-site access to them. The library's
paper preservation accomplishments, cultural programs, and services
to the blind and persons with disabilities are notable as well.
Magazine
A periodical for general reading, quick information, or entertainment,
frequently containing advertising for consumer products. Compare with
"Journal" (above).
Modern Language Association
or MLA
What the MLA web site says:
What Is MLA Style?
The Modern Language Association does not publish its documentation
guidelines on the Web. For an authoritative explanation of MLA style,
see the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (for high school
and undergraduate college students) and the MLA Style Manual and
Guide to Scholarly Publishing (for graduate students, scholars,
and professional writers). Please also see frequently asked questions
about MLA style.
The style recommended by the association for preparing
scholarly manuscripts and student research papers concerns itself
with the mechanics of writing, such as punctuation, quotation, and
documentation of sources. MLA style has been widely adopted by schools,
academic departments, and instructors for nearly half a century.
MLA guidelines are also currently used by over 125
scholarly and literary journals, newsletters, and magazines with
circulations over one thousand; by hundreds of smaller periodicals;
and by many university and commercial presses. MLA style is commonly
followed not only in the United States but in Canada and other countries
as well; Japanese translations of the MLA Handbook for Writers of
Research Papers appeared in 1980, 1984, and 1988, and a Chinese
translation was published in 1990.
In a 1991 article on style manuals, Booklist cited
MLA documentation style as one of the "big three," along
with the guidelines published by the American Psychological Association
and the University of Chicago Press.
OPAC
An acronym for the term "Online Public Access Catalog."
Online
Catalog, is the Hessel Library's online public access catalog.
Online
A term used in searching computerized indexes to describe the direct
interactive process of retrieving citations on a particular subject.
One uses the Web, for example, to do online banking, search the Google
search engine, buy an airline ticket, and search libraries' electronic
resources to information.
PDF
Portable Document Format. Capturing and sending electronic documents
in exactly the intended format. A sample of a PDF document looks like
this:
Peer reviewed (refereed) journal
Please note that journals ARE magazines. What makes a magazine a scholarly
journal is that the articles have been reviewed or refereed by the
authors' peers, i.e., an editorial board of specialists in the field
of research who evaluate the content and methodology of the author(s)
work and results. Editorial board information generally appears on
the inside cover page or title page.
Periodicals or Serials
Publications which are issued at regular intervals and generally intended
to be continued indefinitely. Examples: newspapers, magazines, journals.
Plagiarize
To copy and take credit for someone else's work, instead of acknowledging
in writing that someone else produced it. Plagiarism can be grounds
for dismissal from most colleges and universities. Go to a web site
from Indiana
University to read up on plagiarizism. Included are five examples
on plagiarism and how to avoid it. Here is one of IU's examples:
Proximity Operators
Like "Boolean Operators" (see above), these are terms available
to use in certain electronic databases that serve to give you better,
more precise results when you search a database. Example in Lexis-Nexis:
doctor w/s malpractice [both of these words must be located
in the sentence]
Here is the lead sentence from an article from the Baltimore Sun,
June 30, 2004. Note that the word doctor was part of the
search. Lexis-Nexis also searched doctors, the plural form..
Stacks
Areas of a library where materials are located. In the stacks you
will find rows of floor to ceiling shelves on which books, periodicals,
and other materials are arranged systematically, either by subject
or alphabetically by titles.
Truncation
A search method or technique (*) used in many online databases. For
example, in EBSCOhost's Academic Search Elite database, a truncation
search would look like this:
econ*
[records would be retrieved that contain the words economics,
economically, economist]
URL
Abbreviation for uniform (or universal) resource locator, the address
of a World Wide Web page. The Library's URL is:
http://www.lakemichigancollege.edu/lib/
World Wide Web (WWW)
A vast network of scholarly and popular information, located on the
Internet, that includes text, pictures, sound, and moving images.
Also known as "the Web," or "WWW." The Web uses
"links." Use a mouse to point to a "link" to a
URL on screen, click on the link, and a few seconds (or less) later
you will be at a new source of information. Web "browsers"
such as Internet Explorer are what you use to search for information
on the Web.
The staff at the William Hessel Library think of search engines like
Google, Alta Vista, and Yahoo as being part of the "public web"
- anyone has access to these. But the Library's subscription databases
which contain information normally found in print but now available
electronically and which the Library pays for are considered the "private
web." One needs to be a student or staff to access these databases.
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