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Definitions |
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Bibliographic databases are databases that contain citations to publications, such as periodical articles, books, or dissertations. Some bibliographic databases may also provide abstracts, or brief summaries, for articles. Reading these abstracts may help you decide if the article is relevant to your research need, before you try to locate the original article. Bibliographic databases can usually be searched by subject, author, and key words. Each citation includes enough basic information about an item for you to be able to locate it in your own library or obtain it from another library.
Bibliographic databases can be grouped into two broad types:
Subject databases cover a more narrow range of topics, often focusing on a single discipline.
Examples:
Full-text databases are similar to bibliographic databases, but in addition to the citations to publications, they also include the actual content of the item referred to by the citation, such as an article, poem, or even a complete book.
Image databases are databases that contain visual information, such as illustrations, artwork, and photographs. Records for images included in the database may have additional information added, to make it possible to search by specific criteria, such as subject, artist, or date of creation.
Numeric databases are databases that contain primarily statistical data. They may require knowledge of specific software that enables the user to extract specific information and display it in different ways, such as in tables, charts, or graphs.
Let?s practice finding critical information in database records.
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