Research Guides > Glossary

Study these important terms used in the guides. Use BACK to return to the previous page.

• Biographical Information
  Information about the lives of people important to the research topic.

• Chat
  A group which meets "synchronously" (all users need to be logged in at the same time).

• Magazine
  These periodicals usually:
  1. are published weekly or monthly
  2. contain short or medium length articles, often with catchy titles, written by staff writers for the general public
  3. do not provide bibliographies, footnotes, or lists of references
  4. have glossy covers and contain color photographs and numerous advertisements throughout each issue

• Mailing List
  A group where all communication is via e-mail. Read mailing lists to learn about trends and hot topics and to share your own ideas.

• Moderated list
  A mailing list or forum with a person (moderator) responsible for reviewing all postings and ensuring they relate to the topic at hand.

• Newsgroup
  Newsgroups (sometimes called USENET news) work much like mailing lists, except that they are read with special news reader software.

• Periodical Index
  This is a type of article database that allows the user to search by author, title or key word to retrieve either article citations (brief descriptions), abstracts (summaries of article content) or the full text of articles online. The database may include articles from magazines, scholarly journals, trade publications and newpapers.

• Portal
  This type of World Wide Web site is a central jumping-off point to content and applications on a topic. It may also be called a "gateway," "research guide," "virtual library" or "Web directory." It includes links to online resources, organized into topical categories, and may also include articles, current news and other special features. Many portals provide a search function, but the nature of this search varies widely.

• Primary Source
  Resource created at the time of an historical event or era. These include:
  1. Published documents - books, newspapers, pamphlets, advertisements, government reports, laws, etc. Scholarly journal articles that report results of original research are also considered primary sources.
  2. Unpublished documents - letters, diaries, financial records, etc.
  3. Oral and visual artifacts - objects produced by human craft, such as speeches, recordings, paintings, photographs, film, archaeological finds, etc.

• Scholarly Journal
  These periodicals:
  1. are published bimonthly (6 times/year), quarterly (4 times/year), or semiannually (2 times/year)
  2. contain long articles with descriptive titles written by specialists for others in the field
  3. provide bibliographies, footnotes, or lists of references with articles
  4. have plain, straight-forward covers and few photographs or advertisements (if any)

• Search Engine
  A search engine (also called a "Web Index") has three parts:
  1. A spider (also called a "crawler" or a "robot") that visits and reads pages on Web sites. The spider uses hypertext links on each page to discover and read a site's other pages
  2. A program that creates a huge index (sometimes called a "catalog") from the pages that have been read
  3. A program that receives your search request, compares it to the entries in the index, and returns results to you
  Some search engines are topical, or dedicated to particular subjects.

• Secondary Source
  Resource that discusses or analyzes primary sources. Many books and articles are secondary sources.

• Statistics
  Collated or raw numbers that are the result of research, surveys, or information gathering. Data may appear in database form, as raw numbers, or in stylized report and table format.

• Trade Publication
  These periodicals usually:
  1. focus on a specific industry, field, or trade
  2. are published weekly or monthly
  3. contain news, articles about products, goods, or other items, statistics, announcements, and the like
  4. do not provide bibliographies, footnotes, or lists of references
  5. have glossy covers; contain photographs and advertisements for products pertinent to the industry, field, or trade.

• Vortal (Vertical Industry Portal)
  This type of Web site provides a gateway or portal to information related to a particular industry, such as health care, insurance, automobiles, or food manufacturing.

• Web Forum
  These groups require no special software other than your Web browser. Like mailing lists and newsgroups they are "asynchronous" (meaning you can read messages and reply whenever convenient for you).