Information Competency Terms (edited 4/25/06)
Sandra Bozarth CSUB Librarian

Abstract- A summary of an article, normally published in a journal index.

Academic Journal-  A periodical that consists primarily of research articles, written for academic specialists by academic specialists. Articles in academic journals are reviewed by other specialists in the field before they are published to ensure that research has been done properly and that the conclusions are reasonable.

ADA- Americans With Disabilities Act - Federal civil rights legislation for disabled persons passed in 1990; calls on public transit systems to make their services more fully accessible as well as to underwrite a parallel network of paratransit service.

AUP -An Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) is a policy that a user must agree to follow in order to be provided with access to a network or to the Internet.

Call Number- Letters, figures, and symbols, separate or in combination, assigned to a book to indicate its location on shelves. CSUB uses call number that look similar to this one HA 202 B87 2002.

Concept- A generic idea generalized from particular instances.

Copyright- a document granting exclusive right to publish and sell literary or musical or artistic work. The legal protection given to authors which protects them against unauthorized copying of their work

Boolean Search- A search in which terms are logically segregated into sets and linked using "and," "or," or "not" operators.

Catalog- A collection of items arranged according to some definite plan. Similar to a bibliography, it is a list which records, describes and indexes the resource of a collection, a library or a group of libraries.

Citation- A note or reference to a work. Usually citations include author, title, name of journal or book, and date, page(s) etc.

Database- An electronically searchable compilation of standardized information.

Domain name- The unique name that identifies a Web site. Example: "Pfizer," in the Web address http://www.pfizer.com.

Field- A category item in a database (such as address). A part of a record.

ILL-this stands for interlibrary loan. A cooperative arrangement among libraries by which one library may borrow material from another library.

Internet- A network of computer networks which operates world-wide using a common set of communications protocols.

Keyword-The word or words that relate to a particular topic. Keywords or phrases are used to construct a search statement to find information.

Magazine- A periodical containing articles for a popular or non-specialized audience.

Microform- Microfilm or microfiche. A publication that has been reproduced on film and can be
viewed through projection equipment in most libraries.

Peer-reviewed article- (Also referred to as scholarly articles). An article that has been reviewed by other specialists in the field before it is published to ensure that research has been done properly and that the conclusions are reasonable. Academic and/or scholarly journals contain peer-reviewed articles.

Peer-reviewed article- (Also referred to as scholarly articles). An article that has been reviewed by other specialists in the field before it is published to ensure that research has been done properly and that the conclusions are reasonable. Academic and/or scholarly journals contain peer-reviewed articles.

Periodical- A publication such as a magazine or journal published on a weekly, monthly, or semiannual basis.

Periodical Index-  An electronic database or its paper equivalent that contains information about articles published in periodicals, such as title, author, date and subject. 

Plagiarism-To steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own: use (another's production) without crediting the source. Intransitive senses: to commit literary theft: present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source.

Primary Source- Raw data, diaries, letters, manuscripts, and original accounts of events are considered primary sources.  In most cases, these are historical documents which are no longer copyrighted.

Proximity Search- A search in which terms are grouped by their physical relation to one another and linked using terms like "near" or "w/5." Not all indexes allow proximity searches.

Record- A complete item in a database, contains all the fields for a specific item (such as a name, address, and phone number in a database of  members of a college class)

Search Engine- A tool, program or software that enables users to search the Internet using keywords.

Search Strategy- a series of steps for planning and preparing an efficient way to collect pertinent information on a given topic.

Secondary Source- Information that has been analyzed and interpreted

SPAM- To indiscriminately send unsolicited, unwanted, irrelevant, or inappropriate messages, especially commercial advertising in mass quantities. Electronic "junk mail".

Synonym- One of two or more words or expressions of the same language that have the same or nearly the same meaning in some or all senses.

Truncation or Truncate- In database searching, to cut the search term short at any point in order, for example, to retrieve all terms with a common root or both the singular and plural forms of a word. Often requires using a truncation symbols, (eg *,?,#).

URL- An acronym for "Uniform Resource Locator," this is an address that specifies the location of a file on the Internet (eg www.csub.edu).

WWW- Stands for World Wide Web. A very popular Internet service that organizes information using a hypertext and hypermedia system of linking documents, FTP sites, gopher sites, WAIS, and telnet.  It is a collection of online documents stored on servers around the world, that are connected to the Internet