Abstract: The abstract of an article is a brief summary of its contents. Abstracts can save you time by helping you identify the best articles on your topic.

Author(s): Scully, Malcolm G
Title: Taking the pulse of the Kalamazoo
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education 47, no. 38
(Jun 1, 2001): p. B16

Abstract: Scully discusses the work by Jay C. Means, Charles F. Ides, and their colleagues at Western Michigan University to reclaim the Kalamazoo River. They are monitoring how contaminants flow through the river's watershed and are using sophisticated genetic techniques to study the effects of the contaminants on the organisms--including humans--that live in and around the river.

Bibliography: 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. Bibliographies point to more sources about the topic.

Boolean: Boolean logic uses words called operators. The three main operators are: AND, OR and NOT. Databases use Boolean logic to locate only those items that match your search.

The blue areas in the following diagrams represent the number of hits you would receive from doing a search using the Boolean operators AND or OR in the same database. Using OR retrieves a large number of items:

Using AND narrows the number of items returned:


Citation: These identify published information so others who read your work can verify facts or research the same information more easily. Citations often include the author, article title, journal title, page numbers and publication information. Citations of Web documents also include a URL and the day the information was accessed.

Copyright: The legal right granted to an author to exclusive publication,
production, sale, or distribution of a creative work for a certain length of
time.

Database: A database provides a way of organizing information so that you can easily find what you are looking for. A journal index is the most common type of database in an academic library. Each article citation in a database is composed of individual pieces of information called fields.

Dewey Decimal Classification System: Many libraries use the Dewey Decimal Classification System (DDC) which divides knowledge into ten main classes:

000 – Computer science, information, and general works 100 – Philosophy and psychology 200 – Religion 300 – Social sciences 400 – Languages

500 – Science and Mathematics 600 – Technology and applied science 700 – Arts and recreation 800 – Literature 900 – History and geography

The ten main classes are then further subdivided. Each main class has ten divisions, and each division has ten sections. Hence the system can be summarized in 10 main classes, 100 divisions and 1000 sections.

For instance, Divided Highways: Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life, has a call number of

388.122 L588

300 - Social Sciences
380 - Commerce, Communications, Transportation
388 - Transportation
388.1 - Roads
388.12 - Kinds of Roads
388.122 Expressways

Fields: Fields include basic citation information, such as the author, title,
etc. Some databases include fields for subject headings, abstracts, and other information, as well. When you do a search in a database, you may search in a specific a field. For example, when you use an author search you are searching only the author field. Keyword searches give you the option of searching all the fields at the same time.

Full text: The complete electronic text of an article is called the full text. Some databases, like Academic Search Premier and Wilson Omnifile FullText, provide entire articles online. 

Hyperlinking: This allows computer users to connect to other sources of
information in a non-sequential way through links.

Index: an alphabetical listing of titles, authors, and subjects along with the
citation information (name of journal, date of publication, page numbers, etc.) of the publication in which the item appeared. Periodical databases are online versions of print indexes. 

Internet: The Internet is a global network, connecting many smaller individual networks. For example, a computer in your room is connected to another computer on campus. All the departments on campus are then connected to a larger network in your state. The statewide network is connected to regional, national and international networks.

Journal Finder: A tool used to search for journals available at the Wayne State College Conn Library. Results list not only magazines, journals, and newspapers in the print collection, but also online databases that provide materials in full-text. The Journal Finder can be accessed from the library's homepage or though this direct link.

Keyword: A significant or memorable word or term in the title, abstract, or text of item in an index.

Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): A thesaurus of subject headings maintained by the Library of Congress for use in bibliographic records. LCSHs are applied to every item within a library’s collection, and help a user access items on similar topics in the library catalog. If you could only locate items by title or author, you would waste a lot of time searching and end up missing many items because since that is quite ineffective and inefficient.

Microforms: These are images from materials such as newspapers that are shrunk down and stored on film in rolls (microfilm) or sheets (microfiche) or on microcards. Microforms must be viewed on machines that enlarge the images.

Nesting: Nesting keeps concepts that are alike together and tells a search engine to search the terms in the parentheses first. Use parentheses to group concepts when you use two or more Boolean operators:

alcohol AND (adolescents OR teenagers)

This search will retrieve records on alcohol and adolescents, as well as items on alcohol and teenagers.

Paraphrase: To put another's words and ideas into your own words. A good paraphrase shows you have a clear understanding of the source material. Paraphrases must always be cited.

Peer reviewed: This refers to journal articles or other scholarly works that have been evaluated by a group of experts in the author's field. Reviewers make sure scholarly works meet the accepted standards of that field. Also known as "refereed."

Periodicals: Publications which are issued at least twice a year, including
journals, magazines, and newspapers are called periodicals. Current periodicals are those which have recently arrived. In Conn Library they are on open shelves in the Periodical Room. Newspapers are found in the Great Plains Room. Bound periodicals are back issues that are shelved in the Periodicals Room.

Plagiarism: Presenting another author's word and ideas as your own. There are many ways to plagiarize, purposefully or accidentally. One example is using another author's exact words without using quotation marks or giving credit to the source. However, even if you don't use an author's exact words, you are still plagiarizing if you don't provide citations.

Popular and scholarly sources: Many of the assignments for your courses may ask you to use specific sources or types of sources such as popular magazine articles or scholarly or professional journal articles. There are some basic ways that you can identify these types of periodicals.

Type of Source	Popular Magazines	Trade Journals	Scholarly Journals
Examples	The Economist, Psychology Today, Time, National Geographic	Advertising Age, The CPA Journal, Billboard, American Libraries	Journal of the History of Ideas, College English, Antiquity, Science
Audience	For the general public; use language understood by the average reader	For those in a particular trade or industry	For students, scholars, researchers; uses specialized vocabulary of the discipline
Content	May report research as news items,feature stories, editorials and opinion pieces	Reports on problems or issues in a particular industry	Reports original research, theory; may include an abstract
Appearance	Highly visual, a lot of advertising, color, photos, short articles with no bibliographies or references	Visual, contains advertising, color, photos,	Little or no advertising, has tables & charts, high concentration of print, lengthy articles, bibliographies & references
Authors	Author may not be named, frequently a staff writer, not a subject expert	Staff writers, freelance authors	Authors are specialists, articles are signed, & credentials such as degrees, university affiliation are often given.

 


Protocol: A set of rules governing the format of messages that are exchanged between computers. 

Public Domain: Creative material which has no copyright protection and which may be used or modified by anyone without permission. Material enters the public domain for the following reasons: 1) the work never had copyright protection; 2) the copyright expired; 3) the copyright was waived by the creator.

Quote: To use an author's exact words. Quotations must be indicated by quotation marks (" "), or as a separate block of text (block quote).

Refereed: See "peer-reviewed."

Stacks: Refers to the area of a library in which books and other materials are stored. This also refers to the book shelves, which are "stacked" one upon the other.

Summarize: To state the main ideas of one or a group of sources in your own words. Summaries must always be cited.

Truncation: This is a way to search databases for variations in the spelling of a search term. First, a search term is shortened to a stem (ex. smoking can be shortened to smok.) The stem is followed by a wildcard symbol such as *, ?, or ! (depending on the database). The database will find that stem plus anything that comes after it. For instance, the truncated term smok* will retrieve records that include the words smoke, smoking, smoker, or smokers.

psychol*	will return records with the terms psychology, psychological, psychologist, etc.
environ*	will return records with the terms environment, environments, environmental, etc.

World Wide Web: The Web is only one part of the Internet. It is a collection of information of miscellaneous documents, articles, opinions, stories, art, sounds and animations stored on Web servers, that you can access with a Web browser.