Fine: A fee that you might be charged if you do not return items by the date that they are supposed to be returned.
Boolean Logic: The words "AND" and "OR" used in a logical way to join together your keywords that tells the database exactly what you are looking for.
Library Card: Your LPC student ID card is your library card. Your library card/student ID card is needed to check out any items from the library.
Catalog: The search bar on the library homepage that searches all of our books, DVD’s, CD’s, and basic readers.
Reference Desk: This is the desk where the librarians sit. Come to this desk if you need help with finding books, articles, magazines, DVD’s, and more. You can also get help with citing at this desk.
Librarian: Individuals who work in the library who can help you find items for your research projects and cite them. Librarians all have at least a Masters Degree and have studied how information is organized, managed, and created.
Library Stacks: This is where our main group of books are shelved. The library stacks are the shelves of books that are to your left when you walk past the reference desk.
Call Number: These are numbers that are on the spines of the books. These numbers act as the “address” or location of the book on the shelf.
Library of Congress (LC) Call Numbers: This is the call number system that academic libraries, including the LPC library use to organize their books.
Dewey Decimal System: This is the call number system that public libraries use to organize their books.
Print Station: This is where you go to pay and release your print job after you have send your paper or image to the printer.
Reserve Textbooks: Textbooks for your courses that may available for you to check out. They can be used in the library only for one or two hours. Only available if your teacher has given them to us to check out to students.
Check-Out: The term used to describe the process of borrowing items from the library. Checkout items at the Check Out Desk. Materials that you can check-out, include; laptops, group study room keys, and reserve textbooks.
The Open Web: The part of the web that is freely and easily accessible through a search engine like Google. Offers access to sites like Wikipedia, Amazon, and Facebook. Cannot provide free, legal access to material that costs money (published material). Very useful for presearching a topic and/or getting information from government agencies, educational institutions, and private foundations and organizations.
The Deep Web: The part of the web that is not freely and easily accessible through a search engine like Google. Library databases are an example of a tool that provides access to a part of the deep web. Restricted to users that are registered with the library or institution providing access (login required).
Database: This is an online tool that holds a lot of material in an easily found or searched way. Library databases often contain access to periodical articles, images, music, and more.
Cite, Citing, & Citations: To cite, is to give credit to the source of a piece of information that you use, but is not your own. Citing your sources is the act of giving credit. Citations are the actual information about the source that you use to cite; citations appear throughout your paper as “In-Text Citations” and then at the end of your paper in their full form in your “Works Cited” list.
Plagiarism: Using information that you did not create without giving credit to the source of the information. Avoid plagiarism by citing any source using in-text citations throughout your paper when you are writing information that is not your own and then providing the full citation at the end in your “Works Cited” list.
Reference/eReference: Reference materials that are print or online. Examples of reference items are encyclopedias and dictionaries. Reference items are published once and have a year of publication. They often have multiple volumes and are re-published with a new edition. Information from books is thorough and in-depth, but sometimes less current due to their length, the time it takes to write one, and just being published once.
Books/eBooks: Books that are print or online. Books are published once and have a year of publication. They can be re-published with a new edition, but otherwise are just published once. Information from books is thorough and in-depth, but sometimes less current due to their length, the time it takes to write one, and just being published once.
Periodicals: Sources that are published “periodically” and contain articles. Periodicals can be scholarly or popular depending on their purpose. Types of periodicals are newspapers, magazines, and journals. The articles within periodicals are often very narrow in focus and are more up to date than books or encyclopedias due to their publication time frame and length.
Scholarly Articles: Articles from journals written by experts in the field for students and other researchers. These articles are most easily identified by the list of authors and their credentials at the beginning; followed by an abstract; and then a list of citations at the end.
Popular Articles: Articles from magazines and newspapers written by journalists for the general public. These articles are most easily identified by their pictures, fun titles, and the lack of an abstract or citations.
Subjective: Information understood from one person’s point of view. For example, a diary or an editorial article.
Objective: Information understood from more than one person’s point of view. More factual. For example, a primary research article.
Primary: Information written by the person or people that experienced an event or topic. For example, a diary or research article written by the experts who did the research.
Secondary: Information written using primary information about an event or topic. For example a news article or book written about a historical event.
Tertiary: Information consolidated from secondary and primary information about an event or topic. For example an encyclopedia entry or a textbook.
Popular: A description for periodicals that are written for the general public. Often they are more appealing to the eye, use no field-specific jargon, and are written by journalists. These articles are found in magazines and newspapers and generally, do not have abstracts or a bibliography at the end.
Scholarly: A description for periodicals that are written for a more academic audience; students or researchers. Often they are not visually appealing, do use field-specific jargon, and are written by experts in their field. These articles are found in journals and have abstracts and a bibliography at the end.
Peer-Reviewed: A description for a certain type of journal article that is also reviewed by a panel of the authors' peers in addition to the regular editing process. You cannot tell if a scholarly article is peer-reviewed just by looking at it; you either have to use the databases' option to only see "peer-reviewed articles" or you have to find the journal's website and look at their author instructions to see if they require peer-review. This can also be referred to as "refereed" or "blind-review."