Science and Engineering Library

Glossary

Choose a letter below to go directly to the corresponding section in the glossary:

A

B

C

D

E

F

I

J

L

M

P

R

S

T

A
abstract: the summary of the contents of an article, etc. Also, a periodical index containing such summaries.

article database: searchable database for finding citations to journal articles, conference papers and other types of publications.


B
bibliography: a listing of articles, books, dissertations, etc. on a given subject.


C
call number: a combination of letters and numbers used by a library to classify and arrange books, periodicals, microforms, and other materials. Call numbers are placed on the spine of a book and indicate the location of that item in the library. Most research and academic libraries use Library of Congress call numbers, which indicate the subject of the book and allow
books with the same subject to be shelved together. Library of Congress call numbers use a combination of letters and numbers, for example, GT 605 .R45 1999.

catalog: in this case, the library catalog which is searchable and contains information about all of the materials (books, journals, CD-ROMs, etc.) that the BU Libraries own.

citation: a journal article citation includes author, title of article, title of journal, volume, issue (if any), date and page numbers. A book citation includes author, title, place of publication, publisher, and year of publication.

D
database: mechanism used to store a collection of related data in an organized manner so that it is easy to retrieve.

E
electronic journal (also known as e-journal): a web publication containing the same content as the hard copy journal, that is available online.


F
full text: complete textual contents of a material; normally referring to an electronic journal that publishes all articles in their entirety online.


I
index: Technically, a "periodical index." A listing by subject of periodical articles and possibly books and dissertations. May contain abstracts. Do not confuse this with the simpler variety of index, an alphabetical subject listing at the end of a reference book.

InterLibrary Loan (ILL):
A service of the library which borrows materials it does not own from another library. Library users may borrow books and dissertations, and may obtain photocopies of journal articles through ILL.


J
journal: see periodicals.


L
library of congress classification: organization system for assigning call numbers of library materials that uses a combination of letters and numbers to arrange materials by subject. For more information about the arrangement of subjects in this classification system, visit Library of Congress Classification Online.

Note that this system arranges subjects from general to specific. Class Q is the Science Class and QH is the subclass within Q for Biology and Natural History. If you were browsing the library stacks for books about Ecology, you should be looking specifically at call numbers within the range of QH540-549.5. See Library of Congress Classification Online for the Class Q to see how all sciences are arranged. This concept can be somewhat confusing in the Science and Engineering Library (SEL) because current journals are arranged on the first floor alphabetically by title, so these journals are easily browseable by title. But, if you wanted to browse older, bound journals (located in the lower level of SEL), you should go to the subclass for the specific topic you are looking for. It would take a long time to browse all of the materials located in the Class Q if you were only looking for Ecology information. You would have browsed all of Q-QH539 before finding anything on Ecology!

M
monograph: a library term for book.

P
peer-review: a system used by research journals to evaluate the quality of submitted papers prior to publication. The papers are reviewed by other scientists (peers) working in the same research area.

periodicals: a collective name for journals and magazines. Periodicals do not circulate.

bound periodical: a bound volume, in hard covers, often a year's issues of a journal or magazine. Bound periodicals are kept in call number order in the stacks.

Journal: a monthly or quarterly review, or the like, similar to a magazine, only more scholarly in nature.

magazine: a continuing publication containing articles on a variety of topical subjects. Less scholarly than a journal.

primary literature: detailed record of research formally published as an article in a journal or a paper in the published proceedings of a conference. Some of these are brief reports of research in progress (sometimes called "communications" or letters"), which whole journals or a section of a journal devoted to this format. Unlink these brief reports and papers delivered at conferences, the longer research articles in scholarly journals are peer-reviewed prior to publication lending them the most authority.


R
review: a digest of recent research in a particular subject area.


S
secondary literature: publications summarizing and pointing to the primary literature soon after it appears. Their main purpose it to facilitate timely access to scientific information. Most significant in this category are indexing and abstracting services in which you can search across journals to find articles of interest. Also in this category are review articles published in journals or appearing in annual volumes devoted exclusively to reviews.

serials: a library term for periodicals.

stacks: the areas of the library where the books are shelved. Here at Boston University, the stacks are open to students.


T
thesaurus: a book listing subject headings for a specific periodical index or database. Do not confuse this with the other kind of thesaurus, a book listing synonyms.