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Glossary of Reference Terms

Glossary of Reference Terms

Bibliography - a list of related books and other materials.

Biography - a collection of information on living persons.

Edition- a work that was prepared for publication by someone other than the author, by an editor.

General Encyclopedia - alphabetically arranged works of introductory information about different subjects.

Index - a guide to materials found in newspapers, magazines and journals. General indexes list articles in non-technical, general interest publications. They cover a broad range of subjects. Most have separate author and subject headings as well as a list of book reviews. Specialized indexes list articles devoted to technical or scholarly research.

Internal Citation - the acknowledgment of a source in the text of a paper. It may also be called a parenthetical reference.

Primary Source - includes sources such as statistical data, historical documents and works of literature and art.

Secondary Source - includes such things as books about political issues, historical events, scientific debates or literary works.

Series - a number of separate works usually related to one another in subject or otherwise; these works are issued in succession, normally by the same publisher and in uniform style with a collective title. There are three kinds of series: author, subject and publishers'. Twayne's Author Series and Opposing Viewpoints are two examples of works in a series.

Subject Encyclopedia - a collection of works which is limited to a specific discipline such as science or history. They are sometimes classified as dictionaries even though they contain much more than short definitions.

URL - (Universal Resource Locator) the address of a site on the World Wide Web.