This glossary is not a comprehensive list, but is designed to introduce you to words/terminology commonly used in an academic library setting. All definitions are provided by the Association of College and Research Libraries unless otherwise specified.
[A]
Abstract: A summary or brief description of the content of another longer work. An abstract is often provided along with the citation to a work.
Annotated bibliography: A list of citations to books, articles, and documents. In an annotated bibliography each citation is followed by a descriptive and evaluative paragraph, which is called an annotation.
Archives: 1.) A space which houses historical or public records. 2.) The historical or public records themselves, which are generally non-circulating materials such as collections of personal papers, rare books, ephemera, etc.
Article: A brief work—generally between 1 and 35 pages in length—on a topic. Often published as part of a journal, magazine, or newspaper.
[B]
Bibliography: A list containing citations to the resources used in writing a research paper or other document.
Boolean operator: A word—such as AND, OR, or NOT—that commands a computer to combine search terms. Helps to narrow (AND, NOT) or broaden (OR) searches.
[C]
Call number: A group of letters and/or numbers that identifies a specific item in a library and provides a way for organizing library holdings. Three major types of call numbers are Dewey Decimal, Library of Congress, and Superintendent of Documents.
Catalog: A database (either online or on paper cards) listing and describing the books, journals, government documents, audiovisual and other materials held by a library. Various search terms allow you to look for items in the catalog.
Citation: A reference to a book, magazine or journal article, or other work containing all the information necessary to identify and locate that work. A citation to a book includes its author’s name, title, publisher and place of publication, and date of publication.
Citation counts: The number of times a research output (usually an article) is cited by others.
Citation manager: A personal citation database and bibliography creator that allows you to import, store, organize, and share your research citations.
Controlled vocabulary: Standardized terms used in searching a specific database.
Course reserve: Select books, articles, videotapes, or other materials that instructors want students to read or view for a particular course. These materials are usually kept in one area of the library and circulate for only a short period of time.
[D]
Database: A collection of information stored in an electronic format that can be searched by a computer.
Descriptor: A word that describes the subject of an article or book; used in many computer databases.
DOI: Acronym for Digital Object Identifier. It is a unique alphanumeric string assigned by the publisher to a digital object.
Doodle/When2Meet: Free calendar tools for coordinating meetings and that interact with various external calendar systems like Google Calendar, Yahoo, Outlook, and Apple iCal.
[G]
Google drive/Dropbox: Two different cloud-based, online storage services.
[H]
H-index: An author-level metric invented in 2005 that compares the number of citations generated by a researcher to the number of articles published by the same researcher.
[I]
Index: 1.) A list of names or topics—usually found at the end of a publication—that directs you to the pages where those names or topics are discussed within the publication. 2.) A printed or electronic publication that provides references to periodical articles or books by their subject, author, or other search terms.
Interlibrary services/loan: A service that allows you to borrow materials from other libraries through your own library.
[J]
Journal: A publication, issued on a regular basis, which contains scholarly research published as articles, papers, research reports, or technical reports.
Journal impact factor: A journal-level metric invented in the 1950s that suggests the average number of citations that items in a journal receive within a brief window of time.
[K]
Keyword: A significant or memorable word or term in the title, abstract, or text of an information resource that indicates its subject and is often used as a search term.
[L]
Limits/limiters: Options used in searching that restrict your results to only information resources meeting certain other, non-subject-related, criteria. Limiting options vary by database, but common options include limiting results to materials available full-text in the database, to scholarly publications, to materials written in a particular language, to materials available in a particular location, or to materials published at a specific time.
Literature review: A literature review synthesizes and assesses what is known; it can also assess the quality of existing research, identify gaps in what is known, or critically examine support for alternative theories or arguments. A literature review that is a component of a larger publication typically establishes a theoretical framework for the topic and defines key concepts.
[M]
Multidisciplinary databases: These databases typically cover scholarly articles published across a wide variety of disciplines, similar to Google Scholar. Provide excellent breadth, but may lack in depth for a given subject.
[O]
Open Access: Freely available, digital, online information.
Open educational resources (OER): Teaching, learning, and research resources released under an open license that permits their free use and repurposing by others.
[P]
Peer-reviewed journal: Peer review is a process by which editors have experts in a field review books or articles submitted for publication by the experts’ peers. Peer review helps to ensure the quality of an information source. A peer-reviewed journal is also called a refereed journal or scholarly journal.
Periodical: An information source published in multiple parts at regular intervals (daily, weekly, monthly, biannually). Journals, magazines, and newspapers are all periodicals.
Primary source: An original record of events, such as a diary, a newspaper article, a public record, or scientific documentation.
[R]
Reference: 1.) A service that helps people find needed information. 2.) Sometimes “reference” refers to reference collections, such as encyclopedias, indexes, handbooks, directories, etc. 3.) A citation to a work is also known as a reference.
Research guides: Created by librarians with disciplinary expertise.. Depending on the subject, guides can include links to specialized encyclopedias and handbooks, ejournals, standards, primary sources, non-English sources, streaming media, and more. In addition, most research guides include contact information for the subject librarian.
RSS/Really Simple Syndication: A way of distributing new information from a website, which uses a feed to automatically alert subscribers of new articles or posts.
[S]
Scholarly Publishing: A term that encompasses the system through which research results and writing are created, evaluated, disseminated, and preserved for future use.
Secondary sources: Materials such as books and journal articles that analyze primary sources. Secondary sources usually provide evaluation or interpretation of data or evidence found in original research or documents such as historical manuscripts or memoirs.
Slack: A cloud-based team collaboration tool that provides an easy way to communicate with a group.
Subject-specific databases: Databases of this type tend to limit their coverage to journals that are relevant to a single subject or cluster of subjects, e.g. physics or environmental studies. Provide excellent depth, but may not return as many results as a multidisciplinary database.
[T]
Truncation: Truncation is a technique that broadens searches to include various word endings and spellings. To use truncation in a search, enter the root of a word and put the truncation symbol at the end.
[W]
Wildcards: Substitutes a symbol for one letter in a word. This is useful if a word is spelled in different ways, but still has the same meaning.