Glossary of Library Terms: B

A list of sources (articles, books, videos, reports, etc.) that were consulted in the creation of a book, article, or research paper. It can also refer to a collection of sources on a particular subject or person.

Each entry in the bibliography includes the information necessary to locate the source (see Citation). The bibliography may go under the name of  Works Cited, References or Bibliography depending on the citation style being used.

Sample bibliography (using MLA style)

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bibliographie 

Words that connect two or more keywords when searching for information.

Boolean operators are used to obtain more relevant search results when searching databases or library catalogues. The most commonly used are OR, AND and NOT.

• OR combines your synonyms and related terms to find documents that contain any or all of the words. It broadens your search and produces more results.
• AND combines your different concepts to find only the documents that contain all of the keywords. It narrows your search and produces fewer results.
• NOT followed by a keyword will exclude all the documents that contain that particular word. It is a way of avoiding unrelated articles.  Use it with caution as you may miss out on potentially useful material.

For more information on these three operators please see UnlockingResearch.

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opérateurs booléens

To widen the scope of your search.

Often a search in a database or on the web will give you too few results. There are various methods of broadening your search to come up with more results. One is to use more general terms. For example instead of using the term “Buddhism” use the term “religion.”

Additional suggestions for broadening a search can be found at UnlockingResearch

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élargir