-
Government Documents: The
Western Libraries is a
Depository which receives publications from
the United States, Washington State, and Canadian governments.
-
Index: 1. Alphabetical
list of the subjects discussed in a book with corresponding page numbers.
2. An index may also list subjects located in various places, for example
a periodical index lists articles located in many periodicals. These types
of indexes may be in print form, on CD-ROM or online.
-
Interlibrary Loan (ILL):
A cooperative arrangement among libraries by which one library may borrow
material from another library.
ILLIAD, accessible from the Online Catalog page, is the ILL online
request program.
-
Internet: A worldwide network
of computers that may be accessed both in the Western Libraries and through
the campus computer network. The Internet contains a wide range of materials
developed by a variety of users, from research organizations to your next
door neighbor. Materials used from the Internet should be carefully evaluated.
-
Journal or Magazine or Periodical
or Serial: Publications which come periodically, usually monthly, bi-monthly,
weekly or quarterly. A
journal tends to be scholarly in nature while
a magazine is for general reading.
-
Keyword or Word Searching:
Searching a database by using key or important words.
-
Literature Search: A systematic
and exhaustive search for published material on a specific topic.
-
Magazine: See Journal.
-
Mashups: a derivative work
consisting of two pieces of (generally digital) media conjoined in some
interesting way, such as a video clip with a different soundtrack applied for
humorous effect, or a digital map overlaid with user-supplied data.
-
Menu: A list of choices
or commands that are displayed on the computer screen when using a database.
-
Microform or Microfiche or
Microfilm: Documents
which have been photographed and reduced in size. Microfiche are documents
located on a 3" X 5" card and microfilm are documents located on a reel
of film.
-
Monograph: A book, usually
a single volume dealing with a single subject.
-
Online: Databases that
are stored on a remote computer and accessed locally, usually this means
databases accessed over the Internet.
-
Online Catalog: A catalog
of library records in machine-readable form accessed by a computer.
-
Operators: See Boolean
Logic. Boolean operators are " AND ", " NOT ", and " OR ".
-
Periodical: See Journal.
-
Periodical Index: An index
that lists articles located in journals, magazines, or newspapers. Periodical
indexes provide citations, including author, title, periodical title, volume,
pages, and publication date information. Some periodical indexes include
abstracts which are summaries of the article content.
-
Plagiarism: Taking ideas
or content from an author and portraying those ideas or content as your
own.
-
Podcasts: Audio recordings of
interviews and lectures which can be played either on a desktop computer or
handheld MP3 devices.
-
Primary Source: A firsthand
or eyewitness account of an event, includes diaries, personal narratives,
newspaper accounts, etc. Secondary sources contain interpretations or compilations
of primary source material.
-
Record: Individual entries
in a database. These entries usually contain citation information and are
arranged in fields. For example, in the online catalog you may locate thousands
of book records.
-
RSS: a service that allows
users to be automatically notified of new content on a website of interest.
-
Scholarly Article: A journal
article usually written by a researcher or expert on a subject using original
research. These articles provide an abstract, footnotes, a bibliography
and information about the author.
-
Search Strategy: A road
map or plan for doing research.
-
Serial: See Journal.
-
Social bookmarking: Using
software to share bookmarks of sites or reference lists.
-
Stacks: Bookshelves in
a library.
-
Style: See Citation
Style guide
-
Subject Heading: Using
controlled vocabulary, such as the Library of Congress subject headings,
to search for material on a certain topic.
-
Tagging: adding keywords to
digital objects to describe them, but not as part of a formal classification
system.
-
Thesaurus: A controlled
vocabulary word list with synonyms to accompany a particular index.
-
Thesis Statement: A statement
that articulates the purpose of a research paper.
-
Truncation: The method
of using a symbol to instruct the computer to search variant word spellings.
For example, the question mark is often used as a truncation symbol, so
to locate books on both ecology and ecologists, type the word as: ecolog?.
-
URL: Address of a
page or document on the World Wide Web.
-
Web 2.0:
A term
that describes collaborative Internet applications.
-
Wiki: a set of web pages that
can be easily edited by anyone who is allowed access.
Return to the
Top
Page updated 9.2008