Olds College Library

Glossary

  • One Stop Search - A tool which allows you to enter search terms and search all available databases at one time.
  • Call number - This is the address of the book. It will help you locate the book on the shelves.
    • The books are shelved alphabetically first by the letter which appears on the far left of the call number. Single letters are filed before double letters. (Q comes before QH)
    • Next look at the numbers which follow the letters. Items are then filed numerically. If there is a decimal point, treat the number after the decimal point as a decimal. (QH 67 comes before QH 75 and QH 67.5 comes before QH 67.65)
    • Numbers coming after the second set of letters are decimals and are treated as such. (QH 57 .M43 comes before QH 67 .M5) The last number will be the year of publication or volume number of the item.
  • Catalogue - The library catalogue is a shared database, containing records for each library in the NEOS Library consortium, a group of academic libraries in Alberta.
  • Gale/Infotrac Powersearch Plus - A tool which allows you to search multiple article databases at one time.
  • Keyword - The word or words that relate to a particular topic. Keywords or phrases are used to construct a search statement to find information.
  • Media - Media are audiovisual materials, including videos and compact disks.
  • Periodical Databases
    • A database is an organized collection of information. Examples are a telephone directory or recipe file.
    • Periodical databases, provided by libraries are in an electronic format and contain collections of newspaper, magazine, and journal articles.
    • The articles can be accessed in three ways:
      • as a reference or citation,
      • an abstract or summary of the article,
      • or in many cases, as "full text" articles which have been scanned in and are presented in their entirety, just as they would appear in the periodical, including any pictures, tables, graphs, etc.
  • Periodicals - Items which come out periodically such as magazines, newspapers, and journals.

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