Academic reading material can include both print and online resources: books and e-books; articles from paper-based and online journals; and various other types of reading material related to the subject area you are researching. It can be challenging to find the literature that you need especially if you are using a university or other large institutional library system. When searching an electronic library catalogue to find out what is or isn't available, you'll need to familiarise yourself with some of the commonly used terminology in this area.
Instruction
Think about this different terminology and its use in online library catalogues. Drag and drop each term into the right section according to whether it can be used to refer only to a book, only to a journal or to either a book or a journal. Then check your answers and open the feedback.
Think carefully about how some of the terms, e.g. author and editor, can apply differently in the case of books and journals.
If you would like to know more about the meaning of some of the terms before doing the task, try using a search engine such as Google, for example, entering: define ISSN.
Book
Journal
Either book or journal
article
author
chapter
current / back issues
edition
editor
ISBN
ISSN
issue number
list of contents
publisher
year of publication
Book: author, chapter, edition, ISBN Journal: article, current / back issues, ISSN, issue number Either book or journal: editor, list of contents, publisher, year of publication
Here is some further information about the terminology: • Books have authors and this is a key part of their bibliographic information. The author/ contributor of an article to a journal is also an important detail to know when searching for an item (or writing a reference). However, journals themselves do not have authors but rather editors (not included in the reference for a journal article). As well as books written by a single or more than one author, there are books that are edited (by one or more persons) and these consist of contributed chapters written by different authors.
• ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number. This numerical code is unique for each book. Journals have ISSN codes (International Standard Serial Number).
• There is a unique code or classification consisting of a combination of letters and numbers which identifies a specific item in a library collection. This may be referred to as a call number, a classmark or some other term, depending on the library. These codes help readers to locate items on the shelves and they can be found in library catalogues and on spine labels of books.
Of course, some books and journals can be available as e-books and e-journals respectively. Some e-books are free to download and some are available to readers through a subscribing library or need to individually purchased. Similarly, some paper-based journals have an e-version available to subscribers. Some e-journals are freely available online.
Would you like to review the main points?
The terminology you have been considering includes the most common terms that you will need to know when searching for reading materials for your research. There are, of course, others terms that you will come across.
Watch this video about using search terms effectively to find the literature you need: Literature Searching Basics
If you are interested in exploring more of the terminology used in relation to different types of literature that you might need for your research project, have a look at the following university web link: Academic skills
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