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MC LIBRARY TUTORIALS MC LIBRARIES |
Page 22 of 22 Glossary of Terms Articles Usually brief, non-fiction compositions which form an independent part of a periodical or book. Sometimes referred to as "papers." Authority- A measure of how reliable a source of information is. Is the article written by a recognized expert in the field? Is it based on research? Best terms Usually these are words which occur in subject headings. If you use these words in a keyword search, they will usually results in more articles than if you chose other keywords. Browser Software that allows the user to view both text and pictures on the Internet. Netscape Communicator and Microsoft Explorer are two, well known browsers. Citation A brief listing of all the information necessary to identify a source (an article, book, Webpage, etc.). Cite To provide information so someone else can locate a specific article or book. In the case of an article, the citation consists of author or authors, the date of publication, name of the article, page number(s), volume number, issue number, and page numbers. Concept One aspect of a topic. The topic for a paper can usually be divided into several concepts. For example, the topic, children's use of weapons in America, can be divided into 3 concepts (children and weapons and America.). Each concept contains one or more keywords. Currency- A measure of how up-to-date a work is. Database A collection of information (in this case, mostly articles) which have been arranged into units which a computer can search. Full text When an article is available full-text in an electronic database, it contains all the words in the original journal article or magazine article and sometimes the pictures and tables as well. Journals A specialized or scholarly periodical such as the New England Journal of Medicine. Articles in journals are written by professionals for others in the same field and often use specialized terminology. Many articles in journals have a reference list or list of works cited at the end of the article. Keyword searching- Keyword searching searches for matches for whatever words you specify. Keyword searching looks for the words in such places as the title, citation, and abstract of the work. It returns items that contain matches for the word or words you specify. Keywords A word that you use to search for a topic. Keywords are retrieved from words the author used in the article and need not be from an official list. Also known as "natural vocabulary." Limit A method of reducing the the number of items retrieved in a search. Common limits are: date, location and whether article is available full-text in the database. Magazines A type of periodical which contains articles written for the general reader. Time and Jet are examples of magazines. Periodicals Publications that come out on a regular basis such as every week or every month. Magazines and journals are types of periodicals. Refereed In a refereed journal, each article is evaluated and approved by a panel of experts in the field. Reference List The list at the end of a paper, article, or book which tells where the authors found the information they used. Also known as a "bibliography" or "list of works cited." Scope A measure of how narrow or broad the coverage of a book or article is. The author's aim or purpose in writing; what he or she intends to cover in the work.. Subject heading Subject headings try to group all articles or books on a particular subject together. For example, the person creating the subject headings (the indexer) might group materials under the heading "motion pictures" even though some of the articles might use the words "motion pictures" and other use synonyms such as "movies" or "films." Finding the correct subject heading helps you to locate more useful materials on your topic. Also known as "controlled vocabulary." Synonyms Words that have the same meaning. Synonyms are useful to increase retrieval when searching. For instance; searching "dogs or canines" will find more materials than searching just "dogs". Text and retrieval choices In Expanded Academic ASAP, this notation means that the full text of the article is available on the computer. You have the choice of getting the article in printed form or of e-mailing it to yourself. Truncation Shortening a word to include variations on the basic word.. In online searching, the most common truncation symbols are * (Expanded Academic ASAP, many Internet search engines) and ? (Voyager, National Newspapers). The truncation symbol stands for any number of characters or zero characters. "Teen*" would search for "teenage", "teenager", "teenagers", "teens", as well as "teen". URL stands for Uniform Resources Locator and is the Internet address of a Webpage. Every Web site has a unique URL. URLs look like this: http://www.montgomerycollege.edu/library/welcomemenu.htm
Page created by Diane Fishman,
Librarian, Montgomery College-Takoma Park. |
