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Brief Glossary
abstract:
a summary of a book, article, or other publication.
Abstracts often appear at the beginning of journal articles, as well as
in discovery tools
such as
periodical indexes.
bibliography:
a list of references.
A bibliography may be a full book, or it may appear at the end of an
article or book.
Boolean operator:
an operator used in
database
searching which provides a way to express the logical relationships
between concepts. The most common operators are
AND and OR, but NOT is also sometimes used.
call number:
a number used to indicate the location of a book or other publication
on a library shelf. UNB libraries mostly use the LC (Library of Congress)
system, which is a combination of numbers and letters
(e.g., H41 .I58 2001).
catalogue:
a
discovery tool
containing information about books and other publications in a library.
Catalogues are usually computerized, or “online,” and thus
sometimes called online catalogues or OPACs
(Online Public Access Catalogues).
database:
A collection of data or information that is organized so that it can
be easily accessed by computer. Library bibliographic databases are
made up of thousands of records, which in turn are made up of several
fields. Each record contains one
reference,
while each field contains one piece of bibliographic information,
such as author, title, etc.
discovery tool:
a specific type of
reference
tool that provides access to, or lets you “discover,”
a publication. A discovery tool can be either an electronic
database
or a printed reference book. Discovery tools
are also sometimes called “access tools.”
index:
a discovery tool
that provides access to the contents of publications, mainly
periodical
articles. Indexes are sometimes called “periodical indexes”
or if they contain individual
abstracts
for each article, they may themselves be called “abstracts.”
Electronic indexes may be called “indexing databases,”
“abstracting databases” or, if they contain the entire text
of some of the publications they index, “fulltext databases.”
keyword:
a significant word (or sometimes phrase) related to a publication
(i.e., a word in a title, a subject word, etc.) which is entered as a
search term when searching a
database.
monograph:
a book, usually a relatively short book on a single subject, as
opposed to a textbook or
reference tool.
In technical terms, a monograph is any publication which is
published in one part, as opposed to a
periodical.
peer-reviewed:
usually refers to a scholarly journal which has been evaluated by a
group of subject experts, or the author’s international professional
“peers.” Peer-reviewed journals are also called
“refereed,” “juried,” or sometimes just
“academic,” “scholarly,” or “research”
journals.
periodical:
a publication which has issues published periodically. Magazines,
newspapers, and research journals are examples of types of periodicals.
reference:
refers to a publication. It includes enough bibliographic information
to locate the publication, such as author, title, publisher, etc.
References are also sometimes called “citations.”
reference tool:
a book or
database
designed to be consulted for definite items, and not read consecutively.
A reference tool can be a
discovery tool
that refers to other publications, or it can contain specially compiled
pieces of information (such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, handbooks,
and directories). Reference books are usually shelved in a separate
library reference section, and can not be checked out of the library.
subject heading:
a preferred word or phrase used in a bibliographic
database
to identify the subject of a publication. Sometimes subject headings
are called “controlled vocabulary“ because they originate from
established lists of words from which a cataloguer or indexer may
select when adding records to a database. In some
indexes,
subject headings are called “descriptors,“ and may be found in a
thesaurus.
For more definitions check one of the following
online dictionaries:
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