About this Tutorial

Faculty:

This tutorial was created using Microsoft PowerPoint 2007.

This tutorial will helps student understand jargon used in libraries and help clarify difference between various information sources.

Students:This tutorial will:• Help you understand the terms librarians use to describe parts of

the library and the information resources available to you.• Help you understand the difference between similar types of

resources and how they might be used in your research.

This tutorial meets the following ACRL standards:

2.1b

What to watch for…

Notes – These are to let you know there is important information you need to know about what is being covered.

Sometimes libraries and librarians use terminology that can be confusing to most people.

We often call this “library jargon.”

Use the terms on the following pages to better understand “library jargon.”

jane

helle

r.mlb

logs

.com

Jargon: This term indicates language that is used by a group, profession, or culture, especially when the words and phrases are not understood or used by other people.

Abstract:For most people, abstract is a kind of art work which can be difficult to understand and appreciate. But this is not the case when it comes to library materials.

In the library an abstract is a brief summary of an article. Abstracts can save you time by helping you identify the best articles on your topic without having to read the whole article first. Below is an example of an abstract of a journal article.

A bibliography is a list of the sources an author used when writing a book, article or essay. It is found at the end of written works.

If you find a great article and want to locate more information about the topic you should check the bibliography.

Bibliographies are also known as lists of references or works cited.

Bibliography:

Boolean Searching:

Poverty Drug Abuse

This can be one of the more difficult research concepts to understand, but once you understand how it works, it really helps to make your searches more effective.

This type of searching is called Boolean searching or Boolean Logic. It is a great way to improve your search results.

Sometimes when you search for information on the Internet or in an electronic database, you must search using various combinations of words.

For example, if you were looking for information on the relationship between poverty and drug abuse, you’d have to combine the search terms:

Boolean logic consists of three

logical operators:

– AND – OR – NOT

Freshman

SuccessCollege

Let’s look at these individually to better understand how

each of them work in a search and what results they return.

ORQuestion: I would like information about college or university life.

This will retrieve records with AT LEAST ONE of the search terms. We are searching on the terms college and also university because either of these words might be relevant.

College UniversityThe blue area

represents search results that

contain only the word College.

The red area represents search results that contain only the word University.

The overlapping area represents search results that contain both

College and University.

OR  is most commonly used to search for synonymous terms or concepts.

ANDQuestion: I'm interested in the relationship between poverty and crime.

Notice how we do not retrieve any records with only "poverty" or only "crime.”

Poverty Crime

This search retrieves only records in which BOTH of the search terms are present.

This is shown by the overlapping green area of the two circles which represent all the records that contain both search terms, "poverty" and "crime"

NOTQuestion: I want information about cats,

but I don't want to see anything about dogs.

Cats Dogs

No records are retrieved in the area overlapping the two circles where the word "dogs" appears, even if the word "cats" appears there too.

In this search, we retrieve records in which ONLY ONE of the terms is present, the one we have selected.

The blue shaded area with the word cats represents all the records containing the word "cats,” but not dogs.

The more terms or concepts we combine in a search using  OR , the more results we will retrieve.

College

CampusUniversity

Search terms Results

college 396,482

university 590,791

college OR university 819,214

College University

college OR university OR campus

Search terms Results

college 396,482

university 590,791

college OR university 819,214

college OR university OR campus

929,677

college OR university

The more terms or concepts we combine in a search using  AND, the FEWER results we will retrieve.

Poverty

GenderCrime

college AND university AND campus

Poverty AND Crime

Search terms Results

poverty 76,342

crime 348,252

poverty AND crime 12,998

Poverty Crime

Search terms Results

poverty 76,342

crime 348,252

poverty AND crime 12,998

poverty AND crime AND gender 1,220

Browsers:

A browser is a program that lets you view HTML documents or webpages. These are programs that translate all the computer code into the words and

images that you see when you surf the web.

Did you know that the World Wide Web is just a small part of the Internet? In fact the World Wide Web was considered one of the first browsers ever invented.

Citation Styles:

Below are some examples of APA style:

Dixon, Suzanne. (1992) The Roman Family. Baltimore: Johns

Hopkins University Press.

Wiltshire, R. D. (2006, May 5). Changing thinking patterns to reduce depression. Psychology For the Future, 3, Article 0012. Retrieved March 15, 2007, from http://www.psychologyforthefuture.org/articles/art0012.html

Citations provide important information about articles, books, websites, and other important information you use in your research. A citation style is the way in which you format this information. There are 3 main citation styles used in university classes:

• MLA (Modern Language Association)• APA (American Psychological Association)• Chicago Manual of Style

Citations of articles often include the author, title, magazine or journal name, page numbers and publication information. Citations of documents found online also include a URL and the day the information was accessed.

Book:

Online Article:

Fields:Whether searching Google or an EBSCOhost database, the place you enter your search term(s) is called a field. Some searches let you identify what kind of field you want to search in, such as author, title, subject or text.

A simple Google search field.

Multiple search fields…

With specific identifiers

to narrow your search.

Full-Text:When the complete electronic text of an article is available it is indicated by a full-text icon. Some databases, such as JSTOR and EBSCOhost, provide entire articles online.

Interlibrary Loan (ILL):Sometimes the library may not have the materials you need. Many of the university libraries are connected through an interlibrary loan service. This means we can borrow a book or request a copy of an article that is available in another library if we don’t have it.

Starting from the library home page, follow the links to the ILL form to request materials not available in our library.

Microforms:Storing old copies of magazines and newspapers can take up a lot of space in a library, so older issues are photographed and stored on a microform. These are usually called microfilm or microfiche.

This allows a library to store a large amount of information in a small amount of space.

Reader-printer machines which allow you to view and make copies of microforms are available on the second floor of the library.

Periodicals:

Publications which are issued at least twice a year, including journals, magazines, and newspapers, are called periodicals. Linscheid Library has two sections of periodicals.

“Current periodicals” are those which have recently arrived, usually within the last 6 months. These are shelved by title. “Bound periodicals” are those which have been bound into a volume like a book. These are shelved by call number.

Many periodicals are also available electronically in the library databases.

Reference Materials:Books or electronic resources providing facts, statistics, bibliographies, background information, or other specific pieces of information are called reference materials.

Examples include almanacs, atlases, dictionaries, encyclopedias, handbooks, and indexes. 

The print versions of these materials may be consulted in the library, but may not be borrowed from the library.

In this tutorial you learned

some common library

terminology or jargon.

Thank you for taking

the time to look at this

Glossary of Library Terms!