Jump to: Circulation | Reference | Locating Materials | Kinds of Materials | Online Resources

Barcode Number
The 14-digit number appearing beneath the barcode found in the beginning or end papers of a book. Barcode numbers  are used to charge, discharge, and renew books on the online computer system.

Circulation Desk
A service desk where books and other materials are loaned or charged out to library users. Library materials which do not circulate (reference books and some periodicals, for example) can be used within the library.

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 book when it is returned.

Interlibrary Loan Services
Interlibrary lending and borrowing services provide access to materials that cannot be found in the UT Arlington Library. To borrow such materials, check with an Access Services or Reference librarian.

Recall
Library users may place recalls on books charged out to other people. The people to whom the materials are charged are notified by mail that another library user wants the book. Recalled books must be returned within a short period of time, usually a week.

Renewal
An extension of the loan period for charged library materials. Renewals may be handled in person at the circulation desk, by phone, or through the "Customer Information" portion of the Library Catlog.

Reserves
A selection of specific books, periodical articles and other materials which faculty have indicated that students must read for a particular course. These materials are usually kept together in one area of the library and circulate for a short period of time only. To locate reserve materials, you may need to use the UT Arlington Library Catalog or ask at the circulation or reserve desk.

Bibliography
A bibliography is a list of citations for books, periodical articles or other materials. Published bibliographies on specific subjects are often found in the reference collection.

Citation
Information which fully identifies a publication; a complete citation usually includes author, title, name of journal (if the citation is to an article) or publisher (if to a book), and date. Often pages, volumes and other information will be included in a citation.

Library Assistant
Library assistants are not professional librarians, but they have been trained to help you with many of your research needs. Some reference departments hire library assistants to help answer reference questions and provide general information about the library.

Periodical Indexes and Abstracts
Periodical 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 reference departments. They may be in print form or online through the library web site.

Reference
A special department within a library where you can find librarians, library assistants, and a collection of reference materials to help you with your research needs.

Reference Collection
A selection of library materials used by reference librarians and library assistants to help people find information or to do research. Reference collections contain many sources of information, such as encyclopedias, dictionaries, almanacs, directories, or statistical compilations. They may also have bibliographies, indexes and abstracts. Reference materials usually do not leave the library.

Reference Librarian
Reference librarians are specialists in the field of information retrieval. Generally they have a Masters degree in library science, and many have other graduate degrees as well. They are available at reference desks to help you find the information you are looking for.

Call Numbers
Each item in a library collection is classified in a subject area by some classification system. At UT Arlington, we use Library of Congress call numbers, a combination of letters and numbers (e.g., PQ 1756 .I15 1990). These call numbers are placed on the spine of the book to locate it in the stacks. Call numbers are entered on the records in UT Arlington Library Catalog.

UT Arlington Library Catalog
A computerized catalog that contains records for the UT Arlington Library collections.

Cross Reference
A term used in catalogs, thesauruses and indexes to lead you from one form of entry to another (e.g., American poets see Poets--American).

Internet
A worldwide network of computers that can be accessed via the campus computer network. The Internet allows local computer users to find and use databases on computers of other academic institutions, research institutes, private companies and government agencies.

Keyword Searching
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 UT Arlington Library Catalog.

Stacks
The stacks (bookshelves) are the part of the library which houses its collection. Books and periodicals are arranged on shelves in the stacks.

Subject Headings
Words or phrases assigned to books and articles and used to index these items by topic. Descriptors determining the correct headings for a specific database or catalog is an important part of effective research. See also Thesaurus.

Thesaurus
A list of all the subject headings or descriptors used in a particular database, catalog, or index. The thesaurus for the UT Arlington Library Catalog is called Library of Congress Subject Headings.

World Wide Web
A client-server information system that uses the Internet to access computers containing millions of hypertext documents. For definitions of World Wide Web and Internet terminology, see World Wide Terms and Acronyms.

Media
Films, tapes and other audio-visual materials that require the use of special listening or viewing equipment.

Microforms
Documents, often ones that are bulky or liable to deteriorate rapidly, which have been photographed and reduced in size to reduce the storage space required and to preserve them. Common formats for microforms are microfilm, microfiche, or microcard. Some newspapers, magazines and government documents are available in microform in the UT Arlington libraries.

Periodicals
Publications which are issued at least twice a year, including journals, magazines and newspapers. Current periodicals are those which have recently arrived and are usually kept in loose binders, or on open shelves. Bound periodicals are back issues which have been sent to the bindery, covered with a binding, and placed in the stacks by call number.  See also the next entry, Serials.

Serials
Publications that appear more or less regularly--daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually, or biennally, for example.

Accession Number
A unique number or combination of letters and numbers assigned to each record in a database.

Boolean Searching, see Operators

CD-ROM
Compact Disk-Read Only Memory. A computer-based technique for storing and reading information from a compact disk using a CD player and a personal computer.

Database
A collection of information arranged into individual records to be searched by computer.

Entry: See Record

Field
A part of a record used for a particular category of data. For instance, the title (ti) field displays the title for each record in the database. Some of the other fields in databases are author (au), journal (jn) and abstract (ab). The UT Arlington Library Catalog, contains additional fields that give the description, call number, location, holdings, and circulation status of an item at UT Arlington.

Holdings
A set of fields in the UT Arlington Library Catalog, in a serial record that shows exactly which years and volumes of that serial are available at UT Arlington.  Records for multivolume books also contain a holdings field.

Menu
Choices and commands that are displayed on the screen and can be selected by the user.

Operators
Words such as AND, OR, and NOT that are used to combine search terms to broaden or narrow the results of a search. Combining terms using operators is sometimes called Boolean searching.

Record
A collection of related data, arranged in fields and treated as a unit. The data for each article in a  database makes up a record. The complete information for each item in the UT Arlington Library Catalog, is also a record.

Set Number
Represents the number of articles found for each word or combination of words in a search. In many databases the set number is preceded by a pound sign (#) and may often be combined with an additional subject (e.g., #3 and anorexia).

Truncation
Typing a special symbol at the end of a word to retrieve all possible endings of that word. If you wish to truncate a word while searching the UT Arlington Library Catalog, use the question mark (?); other databases may use the pound sign (#), the asterisk (*), or another symbol. For example, forest? as a keyword in the UT Arlington Library Catalog retrieves forest, forestry, forests, forested, etc.