Terms

abstract—a brief summary of an article's content. Abstracts can save you time by helping you identify the best articles on your topic.

bound volumes—back issues of periodicals that are shelved in the stacks of the NCC Libraries.

browsers—provide a graphical interface to information on the Web. They display pages written in HTML and make it possible for you to click on links to jump to other pages. This neat invention is called hypertext.

 

The most popular browsers are Netscape's Navigator/Communicator and Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Regardless of which browser you choose, you can access the same information and can configure the software to match your personal preferences.

Each browser interprets some HTML elements in its own way, so the same page might display differently, depending on whuch brower you use.
database—provides a way of organizing information so that you can easily find what you are looking for.
Some types of databases are:

Print Databases
The index of a book is a print database. It allows you to go quickly to a topic in the book. A phone book is another type of print database.

Electronic Databases
We usually think of searchable electronic indexes and catalogs when we refer to databases. ProQuest Direct is an example of an electronic database. It quickly looks for a topic in periodicals.
fields—Citations for books and articles provide basic information such as the author of the work, its title, publication information and so on. Each of these types of information is called a field and can be used to search a particular part of the record. For example, when you use an author search you are searching only the author field. Keyword searches give you the option of searching all the fields at the same time.

full text—the complete text of an article available online. Some periodical databases provide full text articles. If the full text is available, you'll see this symbol next to the citation:

 
Library of Congress Classification System (LC)—Northampton Community College Libraries use LC to arrange its collection of materials by subject. LC is divided into 21 branches of knowledge represented by letters:

A - General works
B - Philosophy
C - Auxiliary sciences of history
D - History (general)
E-F - History (Americas)
G - Geography
H - Social sciences
J - Political science
K - Law
L - Education 		M - Music
N - Visual arts
P - Language and literature
Q - Science
R - Medicine
S - Agriculture
T - Technology
U - Military science
V - Naval science
Z - Bibliography; library science

Each branch is divided into more specific topics represented by combinations of letters and numbers. For example, the book Teleworking has the call number HD 2336.3 B523 1995:

H - Social sciences and business
HD - Economic history and conditions
2321 - 4730 - Industry
2331 - 2336 - Household Industry
2336.3 - Telecommuting

recursive process—a process that requires certain steps, but can be completed using different combinations
search engine—an online tool that helps you find information on the Web
server—a computer processor that provides services including access files and control a printer
source—a person or a document that can be used in research to supply information.
Web—only one part of the Internet. It is a collection of information of miscellaneous documents, articles, opinions, stories, art, sounds and animations stored on Web servers, that you can access with a Web browser. The Invisible Web, also referred to as the deep Web, refers to either Web pages that cannot be indexed by a typical search engine or Web pages that a search engine purposely does not index, rendering the data “invisible” to the general user.