Dewey Decimal System: The cataloging system used by Gutman Library. To see a list of Dewey Decimal call numbers from the University of Illinois at Urbana -Champaign, click here.  You might encounter the Library of Congress Classification System at other libraries. Either way, the online catalog is the tool that empowers you to locate items in any library, regardless of the classification system!

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 limit your search terms to a specific field or combination of fields. For example, when you use an author search you are searching only the author field. In journal indexes, online library catalogs, and article indexes with full text, keyword searches give you the option of searching all the searchable fields of a database at the same time.

Format:  The physical description of the material, such as print, microfilm, bound periodical or electronic (from an online database).

Full citation information: Every element of a citation is needed for several reasons. One reason is listed above--see Citation. Another reason is ILL, or Interlibrary Loan. Without the full citation information, an interlibrary loan request can not be completed.

Full text: The complete electronic text of an article is called the full text. Some databases and e-journal collections like ABI/INFORM and SpringerLink provide entire articles online. 

Holdings information: The volumes owned--or "held"-- by a library, in all formats. Holdings information in a library's online catalog is usually provided for both books and periodicals (magazines and journals). In an online periodical database, the holdings information refers to the specific issues that are included in that database, and whether or not the articles in those issues are full-text.
 

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ICMJE (Vancouver Style): ICMJE stands for "International Committee of Medical Journal Editors." It is a style of citation and documentation commonly used by those writing within the Health Sciences. Click here for information about ICMJE style from the Learning and Advising Center.

Index: A finding tool that points you to information, by indicating where that information is. Many books have indexes in the back, which provide the page numbers within the book where the words you are looking for are located. The Avery Index exists as both a print and an online index (an online database) that tells you what articles in which publications might have information on your topic. Instead of pointing to the pages inside of a single book, as the "back-of-the-book"  index does, an indexing tool like Avery Index points you to articles published within a variety of Architecture publications. The articles themselves are not provided by Avery Index, Avery directs you to the articles, by providing their citations. 

Interlibrary Loan (ILL): 
Click here to link to Gutman Library's ILL information page.

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.

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Journal: Calling a periodical a "journal" generally means that it is "scholarly, academic, or peer-reviewed."

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

Library of Congress Classification: The Library of Congress Classification system is divided into 21 branches of knowledge represented by letters.  Each branch is divided into more specific topics represented by combinations of  letters and numbers.
These are the main classes:

A - General works B - Philosophy C - Auxiliary sciences of history D - History (general) E-F - History (Americas) G - Geography H - Social sciences J - Political science K - Law L - Education

M - Music N - Visual arts P - Language and literature Q - Science R - Medicine S - Agriculture T - Technology U - Military science V - Naval science Z - Bibliography; library science

 

Library of Congress Subject Headings: In the online catalog (Module 3), there are different ways to search for books, periodicals, and multimedia items. One type of search is a Subject Search: Subject Browse or Subject Keyword. Subject headings describe in concise terms the main subject matter of the book or other item you have found with your search. Subject headings can also help you to narrow and more clearly articulate what you are trying to find. The Library of Congress, in Washington D.C., decides what words and phrases will be used as subject headings.

Here's an example of a book from our online catalog. The catalog record for the book includes many subject headings (and sub-divisions of most of the subject headings!) Urban ecology, Urbanization, Cities and towns, Sociology, and Sustainable development are the main subject headings used to describe what this book is about.

Magazine:  A publication written for a general audience, and usually available on a newsstand or supermarket checkout counter.  Magazines employ staff writers and guest writers, who are not necessarily recognized experts in any particular field.

Microforms: These are images from materials such as newspapers that are shrunk down and stored on film in rolls (microfilm) or sheets (microfiche). Microforms must be viewed on microform reader / printers. Gutman Library has two reader / printers on the Lower Level. They are networked to the black and white printer on the Lower Level, and to your Home Directory (H-drive). You can print or save directly from the reader / printer.

MLA Format (Modern Language Association): A citation and documentation style commonly used by those writing in the Humanities.
Also used for several courses in the College Studies Program. Click here to see information from the Learning and Advising Center about MLA format.

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.

NetLibrary: An online, e-book collection. Every word in every book is searchable, so, essentially each book becomes its own miniature, searchable database. NetLibrary also has features that allow you to insert "bookmarks" and add personal annotations to your collection of "favorite" books. You can create a free NetLibrary account from on-campus and use NetLibrary anywhere. Click here for more information.

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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: ("refereed") This refers to journal articles or other scholarly works that have been evaluated by a group of experts in the author's field.  Peer-reviewed journals are written by and for practitioners and experts in a field of study or profession. Articles in peer-reviewed journals are oriented towards research and development, and new trends and breakthroughs in the field. The articles submitted to a peer-reviewed journal undergo a reviewing process, administered by the journal's editorial board.
This editorial board is composed of other experts in the field, or the author's "peers", who judge ("referee") the articles. Articles deemed to be contributions to the literature of the professional  the journal represents are included for publication. Many "scholarly journals" are also peer-reviewed journals.  

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 Gutman Library they are on open shelves on the main floor, to the right as you enter the library. They are arranged alphabetically. Bound periodicals are back issues that are bound together, into what looks like giant books of different colors. They are shelved on the Lower Level of the library, and are arranged alphabetically, by the title on the spine.  Periodicals in any format at Gutman Library do NOT circulate.

Plagiarism: Presenting another author's work 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	Women's Wear Daily, Specialty Fabrics Review, Healthcare Packaging	Journal of Interior Design, Social Anthropology, Managerial Finance
Audience	The general public; the language can be understood by the average reader	Those  in a particular trade or industry	Students, scholars, researchers; uses the  specialized vocabulary of the particular discipline
Content	Could report research as news items, feature stories, editorials and opinion pieces	Reports on problems or issues in a particular industry	Reports original research or theory; articles often include an abstract, introduction, literature review, methodology, conclusions/discussion
Appearance	Highly visual, lots of general advertising, color photos, short articles with no references	Mostly visual, can contain industry-specific advertising, often has color photos	No general advertising, articles have tables, graphs or  charts, articles are lengthy and include many cited 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 affiliations are often provided

 
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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).

Reader-printer:  The machine used to view microforms (microfilm and microfiche) and to make printouts of selected pages. The microform reader-printer is located on the Lower Level of the library, in Media Services.

Record: An entry in a database. In full-text periodical databases, the entire full text article would be the "record". In bibliographic (not full-text) databases, the citations or the citations and abstracts would be the "records". Another example would be the entries you find when searching the online catalog: when you opt to "Show Details", you are "opening" or "displaying" the full record.

Refereed: See "peer-reviewed."

Reference Section or Reference Collection: Located across from the Reserve Desk, this collection contains books such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, directories, and other forms of specialized reference information. These books do not circulate (they may not be checked out and removed from the library).

Reserve or Reserve Collection: Shelved behind the Circulation / Reserve Desk, these items may be checked out for 4 hours and used  inside the Library only!   Multi-Media Reserve items (CDs. VHS or DVDs) are also shelved here, and may also be checked out for 4 hours of in-house use. Your instructors have placed these items on Reserve for you, to allow everyone in the class to have equal access.

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Scholarly article: Articles are sometimes referred to as "scholarly" or "scholarly / academic." 
A publication does not have to be a peer-reviewed, refereed journal to be deemed scholarly, but every peer-reviewed, refereed publication would be deemed "scholarly." Therefore, be clear with your instructor if an article needs to be from a peer-reviewed publication (very stringent publication guidelines) or can be from a "merely" scholarly/academic source.

Serial: Is the broad term used to describe something that is published in a series. Newspapers, magazines and journals are all examples of types of serials. The Serials Manager works in the Serials Office in the Library to keep track of all our serial subscriptions.

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.

Subject Headings: In print indexes, online databases and in online or card catalogs, Subject Headings are the concise terms that describe the main ideas or content of the article, book, or other item the database record represents (conference proceeding, report etc). Subject Headings can consist of a single word or a phrase of a few words. In online databases, subject headings are sometimes called Descriptors or Identifiers. In the online catalog, the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) are used.
In online article databases, different terms may be used as subject headings

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

Thesaurus -  a list of the specific subject headings (the controlled vocabulary) used in a particular online database. The quality of a search can be improved by knowing which subject headings to use to describe to the online database what you are trying to find.

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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. 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. 

*	is the truncation symbol for most online database systems and web search engines
environ*	will return records with the terms environment, environments, environmental, etc.
!	is the truncation symbol for Lexis / Nexis

Vancouver Style: see ICMJE


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.