Instructional Services
Glossary of Terms
Search by the first letter of the Glossary word.
| Abstract | The summary of the contents of a journal or magazine article, a book or portion of a book, or other bibliographic material. |
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| ASCII | American Standard Code for Information Interchange. A world wide standard for the most basic fromat for transferring files between programs. Sometimes referred to as unformatted text. |
| Asynchronous communication | Electronic communication involving messages that are posted and received at different times. Email is an example of asynchronous communication. |
| Bandwidth | How much stuff you can send through a connection. Usually measured in bits-per-second. A full page of English text is about 16,000 bits. A fast modem can move about 15,000 bits in one second. Full-motion full screen video would require roughly 10,000,000 bits-per-second, depending on compression. |
| Baud | In common usage the baud rate of a modem is how many bits it can send or receive per second. Technically, baud is the number of times per second that the carrieer signal shifts value, for example a 1200 bit per second modem actually runs at 300 baud, but it moves 4 bits per baud (4 × 300 = 1200 bits per second). |
| Bibliography | A bibliography is a list of citations for books, periodical articles or other materials. Bibliographies are published on specific subjects are often found in reference collections. Bibliographies are also used to list all of the material used to complete a research paper—these are often referred to as Works Cited pages. |
| Bit | Binary Digit. A single digit number in base-2, in other words, either a one or a zero. The smallest unit of comperized data. Bandwidth is usually measured in bit per second. |
| Bookmark | If you are using an Internet browser, you can bookmark or save certain sites on the Internet which you can return to by simply clicking on it from the browser's bookmark pull down menu—sometimes called a hotlist. |
| BPS | Bits per Second. A measurement of how fast data is moved from one place to another. A 28.8 modem can move 28,800 bits per second. |
| Browser | A World Wide Web program for navigating the Internet. Most browsers display graphics and formatted pages and let you click on hyperlinks to jump from one web page to another. Netscape is a WWW browser. |
| Byte | A set of Bits that represent a single chatacter. Usually there are 8 Bits in a Byte, sometimes more, depending on how the measurement is being made. |
| Call Numbers | Each item in a library collection is classified in subject area by some classification system. Call numbers are like house and apartment addresses, each location has a specific identifier. Call numbers are placed on the spine of the book to locate it in the stacks. |
| CD-ROM | Compact Disk—Read Only Memory. A computer based techniques for storing and reading information form a compact disk using and computer or CD player. |
| Circulation | A department within the library where books and other materials are loaned or charged out to library users. The term “circulate” refers to whether or not an item may be checked out of the library, for example, Reference material does not circulate. |
| Citation | Information which fully identifies a publication; a complete citation usually includes author, title, name of journal (if the citation describes an article) or publisher, and date. Usually, pages, volumes and other descriptive information will be included in a citation. When you perform searches using a computerized database, such as Nursing and Allied Health, you will retrieve citations which describe a book chapter or journal article. |
| Cross Reference | A term used in catalogs, and indexes to lead you from one form of access to another. For example: Cancer—Search also under individual organs and regions of the body, e.g. Foot cancer. |
| Cyber- | A prefix describing something that has been created electronically and is available online (e.g. cyberspace, cyperstore, cyberworld). |
| Cyberspace | The Internet; more loosely, the online world. |
| Database | A common term for a collection of information arranged into individual records to be searched by computer. The computerized indexes such as Nursing and Allied Health can be referred to as a database. |
| Dialog Box | A window on your computer screen that prompts you to type something, make choices, or confirm a command before the program can continue. |
| Domain Name | The line of unique letters and/or symbols that identify an Internet site. A domain name has at least two elements, separated by periods (called “dots”). The first element uniquely identify an organization's server (e.g. selu), while the final element, called the domain, identifies the type of organiztion operating the server. Common suffixes include .com (commercial), .edu (educational), .gov (government), .mil (military), .net (network management), and .org (noncommercial/nonprofit). Domains outside the United States often identify the country in which a server is located (e.g., .au for Australia) |
| Electronic mail. Messages sent and received electronically over a network. | |
| E-mail Address | The address you use to send and receive email. Your email address contains your username, the @ symbol, and the domain name. |
| FAQ | Frequently Asked Questions. Pronounced “Fack” a file containing answers to commonly asked questions that new users to a program have asked. There is usually a FAQ section for big web sites and listservs. |
| Field | A record or citation of a book (or library material) or article is made up of fields. A field is a part of a record used for a particular category of data. An example of this is the title, author and abstract of one citation or record. |
| FTP | File Transfer Protocol. A very common method of moving files between two Internet sites. FTP is a special way to login to anonther Internt site for the purposes of retrieving and/or sending files. There are many Internet sites that have established publicly accessible repositories of material that can be obtained using FTP, by logging in using the account name anonymous, thus these sites are call anonymous ftp servers. |
| GIF | Graphics Interchange Format. Pronounced “giff”; one of two common formats (the other is JPEG) for image files assoicated with Web documents. The acronym appears at the end of the filename. |
| Gopher | A program for accessing Internet information through hierarchical menus, gopher will “go for” the information you select and will display it on your screen. The Internet was originally navigated using gopher, but has been supplanted (in the most part) by what is known as the World Wide Web (hypertext). |
| Hold | A library user may place a hold on a book charged out to another person. This ensures that the person placing the hold will be next in line to receive the item when it is returned. |
| Holdings | Holdings information will tell you exactly what periodicals and what issues of that periodical are available in the library. Also books which have multiple volumes will have holdings information in their record. |
| Homepage | Usually the first or main page of a particular web site, a homepage has hypertext links to other pages on the same server or to other Web servers. Both organizations and people can have homepages. |
| HTML | Hypertext markup language—A computer code that allows you to create pages on the Internet. HTML “tags” electronic text to indicate how it should be displayed onscreen by browsers. It provides a common language for browsers computer systems (Mac, PC, Unix, etc). |
| HTTP | Hypertext transer protocol. The communication standards used by browsers and servers to move HTML documents across the Web. |
| Hyperlink | A link within the document that connects to another place on the web. Hyper links are represented by highlighted icons or text. Selecting a hyperlink makes your browser “jump” form one place to another. Hyperlinks are sometimes called hotlinks. |
| Indexes and Abstracts | Indexes list articles which have appeared in journals, magazines, or newspapers. They list author, title, name of periodical, volume, pages and date of publication. Abstracts are indexes that also contain summaries of the content of the article. Both indexes and abstracts are found in the reference room. They are in print form, or on a CD-ROM (or other computerized version) terminal. |
| Interlibrary Loan Services (ILL) | Interlibrary Loan services provide access to materials that cannot be found in the SLU system. You can request books, journal articles, theses, musical scores, etc. through ILL. |
| Internet | A vast network of computers offering many types of services, including email and access to the World Wide Web. As a “network of networks”, the Internet links coumputers around the world. |
| Internet Service Provider (ISP) | A person or company providing access to the Internet. |
| JPEG | Joint Photographic Experts Group. Pronounced “jay-peg”; one of the two common formats (the other is GIF) for image files associated with Web documents. In filenames the acronym appears as jpeg or jpg. |
| Keyword Searching | Allows a user to construct a search by looking for a word or combination of words from the author, title, or subject fields of the library online catalog. |
| Listserv | An ongoing email discussion about a specific issue. Participants subscribe via a central service, and listservs may have a moderator who manages information flow. |
| Media | Film, video and other audiovisual materials that require the use of special listening or viewing equipment. |
| Megabyte | A million bytes. A thousand kilobytes. |
| Menu | Pptions and corresponding commands are displayed on a computer screen and can be selected by the user to navigate the database. |
| Microforms—Microfilm and microfiche | For reasons of preservation and space libraries often keep non-current periodicals and newspapers on microfilm and microfiche. These documents have been photographed and reduced in size. Microfilm is on a reel and microfiche is on a small (4" × 5") piece of plastic. There are specific machines for viewing the microforms that enlarge and allow you to photocopy. |
| Modem | (Modulator, DEModulator). A device that you connect to your computer and to a phone line, that allows the computer to talk to other computers therough the phone system. Basically, modems do for computers what a telephone does for humans. |
| Newsgroup | A group of people and their collection of postings on the Usernt network. Newsgroups are open forums inwhich anyone may participate. Each newsgroup has a topic, which can be broad or narrow. For example, a newsgroup about nursing in general and one about pediatric oncological nursing. |
| Operators | Words such as AND, OR and NOT are operators which allow you to combine search terms to broaden or narrow search results. Combining search terms using these operators is called Boolean Searching. |
| Periodicals | Also referred to as serials. Periodicals are publications which are issued more than once a year—daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually, biennially. This includes journals, magazines and newspapers. Once periodicals are no longer current they are either bound like books and shelved in call number order, or retained as microform. |
| Record | A collection of descriptive data arranged in fields that describes one item (book, article, etc). For example a record is made up of author, title, journal name, date, volume, page numbers and summary (abstract) of the article, each of these are called fields. |
| Reference | A section of the library where materials used by librarians is housed to help people find information and to conduct research. Reference collections contain many sources of information, such as encyclopedias, dictionaries, almanacs, directories, or statistical compilations. |
| Reserve Reading | A selection of specific books, periodical articles and other material which faculty have indicated that students must read for a particular course. |
| Search Engine | Programs that work with your browser to find information on the Web. After you type a keyword or select a given topic, a search engine looks for Web pages containing you keyword(s) and produces a menu of available documents. There are many search engines available and each is different in their scope, search protocols and appearance. Common search engines are Yahoo, Alta Vista, Web Crawler, and HotBot. |
| Server | A computer that handles requests from client computers for data, email, file transfer and other network services. |
| Stacks | The stacks are the part of the library which houses its collection. Books and periodicals are arranged systematically on shelves. |
| Subject Headings | Descriptive and specific words or phrases assigned to library material which are used to organize the library's collection. The descriptive words are a “controlled language” developed by the Library of Congress which helps to clarify certain topics and words and create a uniform classification system. Determining correct subject headings is an important and useful part of conducting research. |
| Surf | To navigate the Internet. |
| Synchronous communication | Electronic communication in which people converse simultaneaously with one another; also called real-time communication. |
| Telnet | A program that lets you log onto another computer from your own computer using a username and password. |
| Truncation | Typing a specific symbol at the end of a word to retrieve all possible endings of that word. When searching LINUS you will use a “?” to truncate a word. Different databases have different truncation symbols. For example: k=nurs? This will retrieve nurse, nurses, nursing. |
| URL | Uniform Resource Locator. A string of characters that uniquely identifies each page of information on the WWW; a web address. |
| Username | The information that, combined with your password, lets you access your computer account; also called userid. |
| World Wide Web (WWW) | A global Internet service connecting hypertext data and resouces. Using a browser, you can move quickly from one Web site to another in search of information, graphics and data. |
These definitions were taken from ILC Glossary of Internet Terms of the Internet Literary Consultants™. The document is adopted from Southeastern Louisiana University, Linus A. Sims Memorial Library.
