bibliographic verification meaning

Chapter 13: Works Cited

What is Bibliographic Information?

Bibliographic information refers to specific elements such as the author’s name, the title of the thing (book, documentary, journal article) and the date it was created. Author + Title + Date are the most common pieces of information and they are often found on a book’s title page and the back of the title page, also known as the verso. Often the date is found on the verso.

For example:

Verso of title page

© 2015 Chelsea Vowel

APA reference for this book

Vowel, C. (2016). Indigenous writes: A guide to First nations, Métis, and Inuit issues in Canada . HighWater Press.

MLA reference for this book

Vowel, Chelsea. Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Issues in Canada . HighWater Press, 2016.

The exact bits of information you need depends on the type of resource being cited.

Bibliographic information for a journal article includes

• publication date
• a volume number, and sometimes an issue number.
• the title of the journal
• the title of the article

This screenshot shows bibliographic information for online journal article published in a journal called The American Sociologist

APA reference for this journal article

Deflem, M. (2013). Professor goes gaga: Teaching Lady Gaga and the sociology of fame. The American Sociologist, 44(2), 117-131.   doi: 10.1007/s12108-013-9180-y

MLA reference for this journal article

Deflem, Mathieu. “Professor Goes Gaga: Teaching Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame.” The American Sociologist, vol. 44, no.2, (2013), pp. 117-131.  doi: 10.1007/s12108-013-9180-y

Bibliographic information for a chapter in a book includes 2 titles — the chapter title and the book title.

APA reference for this chapter in an online book

Snively, G., & Corsiglia, J. (2016). Indigenous science: proven, practical and timeless. In G. Snively & Wanosts’a7 Lorna Williams (Eds.), Knowing Home: Braiding Indigenous Science with Western Science , Book 1. Victoria: University of Victoria.

Chapter 6 – Indigenous Science: Proven, Practical and Timeless

MLA reference for this chapter in an online book

Snively, Gloria and John Corsiglia. “Indigenous Science: Proven, Practical and Timeless.” Knowing Home: Braiding Indigenous Science with Western Science , Book 1, edited by Gloria Snively and Wanosts’a7 Lorna Williams, University of Victoria, 2016.

pressbooks.bccampus.ca/knowinghome/chapter/chapter-6/

Bibliographic information for a resource on the web may include a URL or DOI – digital object identifier.

APA reference for this online resource

Conover, M. D., Ferrara, E., Menczer, F., & Flammini, A. (2013). The digital evolution of Occupy Wall Street. PloS One , 8(5). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0064679

MLA reference for this online resource

Conover, Michael D., et al. “The Digital Evolution of Occupy Wall Street.” PloS One , vol. 8, no. 5, 2013. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0064679

Write Here, Right Now: An Interactive Introduction to Academic Writing and Research Copyright © 2018 by Ryerson University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Bibliographic Management Tools: Which Tool is Best?

• Which Tool is Best?
• RefWorks Not Available

Which Tool Is Best?

Citation browser extensions in bibliographic management tools such as Zotero, EndNote, and Mendeley may cause a reloading loop that may trigger a temporary block by a content provider or publisher website. Always update to the latest extension version. If problems persist, clear the cache, try another browser, and/or disable the extension, and report the behavior to the Library Electronic Services team.

Most important things to consider

All of the bibliographic management tools suported by the Fordham libraries are similar, which make selecting one over another very difficult. That choice can seem even more daunting if you are a novice to bibliographic management tools, and if you realize that in order to get one working effectively you will need to devote a number of hours learning the tool, uploading content, and organizing it so that is meets your needs.

With that in mind, here some questions that you should ask  before you make your selection:

Who creates, maintains, and distributes the tool? What is the cost?

One of the primary differences between EndNote, Zotero, and Mendeley is the organization and people who create, maintain, and distribute the tool. Depending on how you feel about personal information, corporations, and networking, you may choose one tool over another. Storage is not unlimited for any of the tools, as your library expands you may need to eventually pay for storage either in the cloud or on your device .

• EndNote Web is free.  EndNote Desktop  is not. They are designed to work together, and are produced and maintained by Clarivate , a large, global publisher and information management corporation. EndNote is part of Clarivate's  Web of Science Group  of products. Fordham IT purchases a license to distribute EndNote Desktop to members of the Fordham community who have a valid access IT username and password. Fordham IT also embeds the EndNote software into Fordham Microsoft Office applications. If you work at a Fordham owned computer, or download Microsoft Office from Fordham IT, EndNote will be embedded. If you leave Fordham University, you will need to either upload all of your content to the free web version of EndNote, transfer your EndNote Desktop access to a license purchased by another institution, or purchase EndNote Desktop access on your own.
• Zotero  is free. See the Zotero page on this research guide for possible charges for expanded storage. It is a project of the  Corporation for Digital Scholarship , a nonprofit organization dedicated to the development of software and services for researchers and cultural heritage institutions. It is open-source, meaning that if you have an idea and skills to improve the tool, you can download the code, build something, and contribute to the Zotero project. Zotero depends on users to provide feedback, ideas, code, and documentation to support the tool. You can, however, use Zotero without contributing money, code, ideas, or feedback. Zotero is totally independent of your academic affiliation.
• Mendeley is a free reference manager and academic social network. It is owned by Elsevier , a large, global publisher and information management corporation that also owns the Scopus database, the Science Direct electronic journal platform, and many scholarly journals and book imprints. Mendeley encourages researchers to share ideas about source material and discuss developments revealed through the scholarly literature via their online platform. Researchers can create a public profile, join a scholarly social network, find and work with collaborators online, upload content to a shared repository, search for jobs within their field, and discover information about grants and funding opportunities from within Mendeley. When you create a Mendeley account your profile is publicly displayed; you can choose to add details to your profile and reveal them to select Mendeley groups.

What tool are the people you work most closely with using?

• Mendeley has features such as their data repository, networking & funding tools, and a connection to Scopus and Elsevier, that may appeal to the STEM community.
• Zotero scrapes data from websites better than the others, so researchers who work in the humanities or social sciences with large amounts of content published on websites (as opposed to in books or journals) may prefer Zotero.
• Individuals who like to work with open-source tools may prefer Zotero.
• Individuals who are resistant to large corporations may prefer Zotero.
• EndNote has been around the longest. As a result, many well established academics may already have a robust EndNote library and may not be eager to migrate to a new tool.
• Ask your colleagues, other members of your academic cohort, and professors what tool they use and prefer, and why.
• If you have a mentor or regular collaborator, you may want to consider using the same tool because it will be easier to share libraries of sources and citations if you are both working with the same tool.

How well does the tool interface with your computer operating system, your favorite browser, your mobile devices?

This is a competitive market. The tools are constantly updating and enhancing the functionality of their platform. Be an advocate for improvement of the tool you choose. Zotero encourages user input, but both Mendeley and EndNote have made significant changes to their tools in response to user demand.

• Carefully read the download requirements of the tool you choose.
• Consult online user groups to gauge how well your preferred tool works with your preferred operating system, word processor, other software, browser, and mobile device.

What kinds of source materials do you need to collect and cite most frequently in your research and other scholarly activities? How will you use your bibliographic management tool?

Once you select a tool, you will probably use it for a number of years or perhaps your entire academic career. Set aside a day, create an account in the free web version of each and test each out. If that is too daunting, interview others to see what they say.

• Test (or ask others) how the tool exports citation content from your favorite database, website, and catalog.
• Create a bibliographic record from scratch and save it. Was it easy? Was it difficult?
• Edit a citation that you imported from a database. Was it easy? Was it difficult?
• Use the Word Processing feature to create a short bibliography in your favorite citation style. Convert that into an annotated bibliography in your favorite citation style. Was it easy? Was it hard? 
• Explore the citation style options. Attempt to edit, save, and name a new style option. Did the tool provide you with the options you need to produce an article for publication?
• Input bibliographic data for multiple kinds of sources: data sets, government documents, films, art exhibits, journal articles, books, pamphlets, etc. Then use that data to create a citation for each. Was it easy? Was it hard?
• Attempt to add tags, keywords, subject headings. Was it easy? Was it hard?
• Attempt to upload a PDF or other content and attach it to a record. Was it easy? Was it hard?
• Search the collection you just created. Are you finding what you want? If not, consider if your search should be improved, or if the search algorithm in the tool is adequate.
• Attempt to group and share a selection of the sources from your library.

See the " Comparing Tools - Articles & Charts " box on this page for additional information on how to compare and choose a tool.

Are you concerned about web accessibility?

• EndNote is ADA compliant  with a  VPAT policy posted on their website .
• Most reviews of bibliographic management tools agree that Zotero has many web accessibility features. The Zotero community has a number of working groups that address issues of web accessibility.
• In the past, Mendeley has had documented web accessibility problems. Please carefully research the Mendeley documentation to confirm that it will meet your web accessibility needs if you are considering this tool.

What if you change your mind? You started with one, but now you want to use another?

No problem! It is relatively easy to migrate from one bibliographic management tool to another. Just be safe: copy and save all of your content before you start your migration.

Comparing Tools - Articles & Charts

• Journal of the Medical Library Association (JMLA) This article, published in July of 2018, titled "Choosing the Right Citation Management Tool: Endnote, Mendeley, Refworks, or Zotero" examines the question from a medical researcher's perspective.
• American University - Which Citation Program Should I Use? This research guide page from American University provides a nicely organized comparison chart that is regularly updated.
• Penn State - Citation Tools This Citation Tools research guide from Penn State provides both a comparison chart and a list of "Quick Citation Generators".
• Portland State University - Manage Citations This research guide from Portland State University provides some great comparison videos and information about web accessibility.
• Wikipedia - Comparison of reference management software This comparison includes older applications that may no longer be supported, as well as actively-maintained software.

Bibliographic Management Advisors

• Peter Patten, [email protected]
• Jane Suda, [email protected]
• David Vassar, [email protected]
• Kirsten Lee, [email protected]
• Tierney Gleason, [email protected]
• Michael Magilligan, [email protected]
• Jeannie Hoag, [email protected]

Downloading Assistance

Need help downloading to your device?

Reach out to IT Customer Care!

HelpIT call center available 24 hours:

718-817-3999 

Or   [email protected] 

Or  Tech Help tab at My.Fordham.edu

Reference & Instruction Department

Reference & Instruction Department Fordham University Libraries Walsh Library   ♦  Rose Hill Campus  ♦  718-817-3586    Quinn Library   ♦  Lincoln Center Campus  ♦  212-636-6050    Fordham Westchester Library   ♦  Fordham Westchester Campus  ♦  914-367-3061  [email protected]   ♦   text 71-TXTX-1284  ♦  Ask a Librarian (Chat)

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• Last Updated: Nov 1, 2023 12:18 PM
• URL: https://fordham.libguides.com/BibliographicManagement

Verifying Citations

• Verification Strategy

Resources Used When Verifying Citations

Articles in journals, books (authored or edited), parts of a book (chapter, paper), conference proceedings & papers, technical reports, theses and dissertations.

• Citation Construction

The resource you select to verify a reference depends upon:

• the type of reference (article, book, etc.)
• the subject of the reference (medicine, nursing, psychology, etc.)
• the date of the reference

All resources listed in this guide are available online unless otherwise noted. Access to these online resources, unless otherwise indicated, is available through the Mulford Library web page.

If you have any questions about these resources and their uses, or if you are having trouble verifying a citation, don't hesitate to contact Mulford Reference Assistance.

The resources listed in this section are the most commonly used databases on campus. Databases covering non-health science disciplines (education, business, history, etc.) are available through OhioLINK.

Book information is commonly found using online catalogs, which list all of the titles owned by one or more libraries. A database may contain book chapters or entire books.

• UToledo Library Catalog This link opens in a new window Online catalog for all University of Toledo Libraries
• National Library of Medicine’s LOCATORplus Online catalog of the National Library of Medicine, mostly health sciences materials
• WorldCat This link opens in a new window Contains catalog records, locations, and borrowing information for millions of books, journals, videos, sound recordings, archival materials, and other materials owned by libraries worldwide.
• UToledo Library Catalog This link opens in a new window Includes table of content information for selected books (mostly since 1993); check also the Notes and Contents fields
• Index to Scientific Book Contents Print resource in the Reference Collection; indexes chapters of books; 1986-1988, 1993-2001
• UToledo Library Catalog This link opens in a new window Online catalog for the University Libraries (including Mulford)
• Index to Scientific and Technical Proceedings Print resource in reference collection; indexes papers in published proceedings; 1978-1992
• Web site of sponsoring agency Search the web site or browse under headings like these: reports, publications, catalog of publications, library, etc.; full text of reports may or may not be available online
• Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations Includes resources for finding, creating, and preserving ETDs; setting up an ETD program; legal and technical questions; and the latest ETD news and research
• << Previous: Verification Strategy
• Next: Citation Construction >>
• Last Updated: Mar 15, 2023 1:41 PM
• URL: https://libguides.utoledo.edu/verify_cites

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Evaluating Bibliographic Citations

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Evaluating sources of information is an important step in any research activity. This section provides information on evaluating bibliographic citations, aspects of evaluation, reading evaluation, print vs. online sources, and evaluating Internet sources.

A bibliographic citation provides relevant information about the author and publication as well as a short summary of the text, usually known as the abstract. Depending on where you find your information, the bibliographic citation will vary.

Before you spend a lot of time reading a source, begin by looking at the following information in the citation to evaluate whether it's worth pursuing.

Consider the author, the title of the work, the summary, where it is (e.g., a book, an academic journal, a blog, a social media site), and the timeliness of the entry. You may also want to look at the keywords to see what other categories the work falls into. Evaluate this information to see if it is relevant and valid for your research.

Library Catalog

When searching for sources in a library catalog, the bibliographic citation will often include the author, the publisher, and the physical location of the source in the library (see image below). Using a library catalog is helpful if you are looking for print sources for your research.

Example of bibliographic citations in a library catalog.

Once you find the bibliographic citation, take a look at the author and the publisher. Has this author published other works? Does the publisher list other publications on their website? If you are still uncertain about the credibility, locate the physical source and read bits of it to see if it contains information that’s relevant to your research.

Online Databases

When searching for information in online databases such as  EbscoHost  or  ProQuest , you will most likely find a bibliographic citation entry beneath the title of the source.

Examples of bibliographic citations in an online database.

If a summary or abstract is not available in the preview, often you can click on the source and view more details (see image below).

Sample extended bibliographic citation and abstract.

Different websites contain different levels of bibliographic citations. Sometimes it’s possible to find complete author information, while other times you may simply have a username or an author’s initials.

Most websites list the available author information directly under the title of the article or at the bottom of the article.

Sometimes a website does not list an author. If this is the case, it’s important to determine whether the website itself seems credible. If the website is associated with a print publication, or is from a well-known organization, it is probably credible. However, you should read the article to determine whether the information seems valid. On the next page you will find more strategies for determining whether a source is credible.

Understanding the differences in bibliographic citations is an important step as you search for sources to include in your research.

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

53 Bibliographic Classification

Much of our thinking about classification comes from the bibliographic domain. Libraries and the classification systems for the resources they contain have been evolving for millennia, shaped by the intellectual, social, and technological conditions of the societies that created them. As early as the third millennium BCE, there were enough written documents—papyrus scrolls or clay tablets—that the need arose to organize them. Some of the first attempts, by Mesopotamian scribes, were simple lists of documents in no particular order. The ancient Greeks, Romans, and Chinese created more principled systems, both sorting works by features such as language and alphabetical order, and placing them into semantically significant categories such as topic or genre. Medieval European libraries were tightly focused on Christian theology, but as secular books and readers proliferated thanks to new technologies and increased literacy, bibliographic classifications grew broader and more complex to accommodate them. Modern classification systems are highly nuanced systems designed to encompass all knowledge; however, they retain some of the same features and biases of their forebears. [1]

We will briefly describe the most important systems for bibliographic classification, especially the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) and Library of Congress Classification (LCC) systems. However, there are several important ways in which bibliographic classification is distinctive and we will discuss those first:

Department stores and supermarkets typically offer tens of thousands of different items (as measured by the number of “ stock keeping units ” or SKU s), and popular online commerce sites like Amazon.com and eBay are of similar scale. However, the standard product classification system for supermarkets has only about 300 categories. [2] The classifications for online stores are typically deeper than those for physical stores, but they are highly idiosyncratic and non-standard. In contrast, scores of university libraries have five million or more distinct items in their collections, and they almost all use the same standard bibliographic classification system that has about 300,000 distinct categories. [3]

A corollary to the previous one that distinguishes bibliographic classification systems is that they have long been shaped and continue to be shaped by the legacy of physical arrangement, user access to the storage locations, and re-shelving that they support. These requirements constrain the evolution and extensibility of bibliographic classifications, making them less able to keep pace with changing concepts and new bodies of knowledge. Amazon classifies the products it sells in huge warehouses, but its customers do not have to pick out their purchases there, and most goods never return to the warehouse. Amazon can add new product categories and manage the resources in warehouses far more easily than libraries can.

With digital libraries, constraints of scale and physical arrangement are substantially eliminated, because the storage location is hidden from the user and the resources do not need to be returned and re-shelved. However, when users can search the entire content of the library, as they have learned to expect from the web, they are less likely to use the bibliographic classification systems that have painstakingly been applied to the library’s resources.

The Dewey Decimal Classification

The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) is the world’s most widely used bibliographic system, applied to books in over 200,000 libraries in 135 countries. It is a proprietary and de facto standard, and it must be licensed for use from the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) . [4]

In 1876 , Melvil Dewey invented the DDC when he was hired to manage the Amherst College library immediately after graduating. Dewey was inspired by Bacon’s attempt to create a universal classification for all knowledge and considered the DDC as a numerical overlay on Bacon with 10 main classes, each divided into 10 more, and so on. Despite his explicit rejection of literary warrant, however, Dewey’s classification was strongly influenced by the existing Amherst collection, which reflected Amherst’s focus on the time on the “ education of indigent young men of piety and talents for the Christian ministry. ” [5]

The resulting nineteenth-century Western bias in the DDC ’s classification of religion seems almost startling today, where it persists in the 23 rd revision (see Figure: “ Religion ” in Dewey Decimal Classification. ) . “ Religion ” is one of the 10 main classes, the 200 class, with nine subclasses, Six of these nine subclasses are topics with “ Christian ” in the name; one class is for the Bible alone; and another section is entitled “ Natural theology. ” Everything else related to the world’s many religions is lumped under 290, “ Other religions. ”

The notational simplicity of a decimal system makes the DDC easy to use and easy to subdivide existing categories, So-called subdivision tables allow facets for language, geography or format to be added to many classes, making the classification more specific. But the overall system is not very hospitable to new areas of knowledge.

The Library of Congress Classification

The US Library of Congress is the largest library in the world today, but it got off to a bad start after being established in 1800 . In 1814 , during the War of 1812 , British troops burned down the US Capitol building where the library was located and the 3000 books in the collection went up in flames. [6] The library was restarted a year later when Congress purchased the personal library of former president Thomas Jefferson , which was over twice the size of the collection that the British burned. Jefferson was a deeply intellectual person, and unlike the narrow historical and legal collection of the original library, Jefferson’s library reflected his “ comprehensive interests in philosophy, history, geography, science, and literature, as well as political and legal treatises. ” [7]

Restarting the Library of Congress around Jefferson’s personal collection and classification had an interesting implication. When Herbert Putnam formally created the Library of Congress Classification ( LCC ) in 1897 , he meant it not as a way to organize all the world’s knowledge, but to provide a practical way to organize and later locate items within the Library of Congress ’s collection. However, despite Putnam’s commitment to literary warrant, the breadth of Jefferson’s collection made the LCC more intellectually ambitious than it might otherwise had been, and probably contributed to its dominant adoption in university libraries.

The LCC has 21 top-level categories, identified by letters instead of using numbers like the DDC (see Figure: Top Level Categories in the Library of Congress Classification. ) . Each top-level category is divided into about 10-20 subclasses, each of which is further subdivided. The complete LCC and supporting information takes up 41 printed volumes.

Bias is apparent in the LCC as it is in the DDC , but is somewhat more subtle. A library for the US emphasizes its own history. “ Naval science ” was vastly more important in the 1800s when it was given its own top level category, separated from other resources about “ Military science ” (which had a subclass for “ Cavalry ”). [8]

The LCC is highly enumerative, and along with the uniqueness principle, this creates distortions over time and sometimes requires contortions to incorporate new disciplines. For example, it might seem odd today that a discipline as broad and important as computer science does not have its own second level category under the Q category of science, but because computer science was first taught in math departments, the LCC has it as the QA76 subclass of mathematics, which is QA . [9]

The BISAC Classification

A very different approach to bibliographic classification is represented in the Book Industry Standards Advisory Committee classification (BISAC) . BISAC is developed by the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) , a non-profit industry association that “ develops, maintains, and promotes standards and best practices that enable the book industry to conduct business more efficiently. ” The BISAC classification system is used by many of the major businesses within the North American book industry, including Amazon , Baker & Taylor , Barnes & Noble , Bookscan , Booksense , Bowker , Indigo , Ingram and most major publishers. [10]

The BISAC classifications are used by publishers to suggest to booksellers how a book should be classified in physical and online bookstores. Because of its commercial and consumer focus, BISAC follows a principle of use warrant, and its categories are biased toward common language usage and popular culture. Some top-level BISAC categories, including Law, Medicine, Music, and Philosophy, are also top-level categories in the LCC . However, BISAC also has top-level categories for Comics & Graphic Novels. Cooking, Pets, and True Crime.

The differences between BISAC and the LCC are understandable because they are used for completely different purposes and generally have little need to come into contact. This changed in 2004 , when Google began its ambitious project to digitize the majority of the world’s books. (See the sidebar, What Is a Library? ) . To the dismay of many people in the library and academic community, Google initially classified books using BISAC rather than the LCC . [11]

In addition, some new public libraries have adopted BISAC rather than the DDC because they feel the former makes the library friendlier to its users. Some librarians believe that their online catalogs need to be more like web search engines, so a less precise classification that uses more familiar category terms seems like a good choice. [12]

One of the earliest known libraries—at Nippur in Mesopotamia—was small enough that its catalog needed no particular organization: the list of titles in the collection fit onto two easily scanned clay tablets. As collections grew, scribes made it easier to browse the contents of a collection by adding “ colophons, ” brief descriptions containing a document’s title, author, and place in a sequence of tablets (Casson 2002) . A further step was the sorting of works into categories. A temple in the ancient Egyptian city of Edfu placed books into different trunks based on their topics, including royal duties, temple management, and timekeeping, as well as two trunks each for astronomy and protection from crocodiles. The fabled library of Alexandria in ancient Greece used categories based on Aristotle’s three modes of thought: theoretical (e.g. mathematics, physics, metaphysics), practical (ethics, politics, economics), and poetic (poetry, music, and art), plus a fourth “ meta-category, ” logic, that applied to all of them. Callimachus , one of the library’s directors, created the Pinakes, a library catalog whose top-level distinction was between poetry and prose (followed by genre, author, and work). A few centuries later, librarians in the Chinese Wei and Jin dynasties (third-fifth centuries CE) settled on four major categories—classics, philosophy, history, and literature—that lasted well into the twentieth century. (Shamurin 1955) Unlike the Greek system, which classified authors, the Chinese system classified individual works; some authors have suggested that this reflects Western cultures’ greater emphasis on the individual. Medieval libraries adapted ancient practices for their own needs: monastery libraries had separate cabinets for topics such as Bibles, Church history, and Christian poets, and divided their collections into Christian and secular literature (meanwhile, scholars in the intellectually flourishing Muslim world classified knowledge into Muslim and non-Muslim sciences) (Christ 1984) . Today’s classification systems reflect both their debt to earlier systems and the biases of their own cultures: the first category of the Universal Decimal Classification, just like Aristotle’s “ logic ” category, is a meta-category covering organization, documentation, and information science, while the first top-level category of the Chinese Classification System is “ Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, and Deng Xiaoping theory. ”

(Taylor and Joudrey 2009, Ch. 3) is a historical review of library classification. (Svenonius 2000) reviews the evolution of the theoretical foundations. (Kilgour 1998) focuses on the evolution of the book and the story of the co-evolution of libraries and classification comes along for the ride.

Supermarkets typically carry anywhere from 15,000 to 60,000 SKU s (depending on the size of the store), and may offer a service deli, a service bakery, and/or a pharmacy. 300 standard product categories ( http://www.fmi.org/research-resources/supermarket-facts ).

http://www.ala.org/tools/libfactsheets/alalibraryfactsheet22 .

Dewey Decimal Classification: http://www.oclc.org/dewey/ .

https://www.amherst.edu/aboutamherst/history . Today Amherst is aggressively co-ed and secular.

That was not a typo. The “ War of 1812 ” lasted well into 1815 . The persistence of an inaccurate name for this war reflects its unique characteristics. Wars (in the English language) are generally named for the location of the fighting or the enemy being fought (the Mexican-American War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Iraq War), or for a particular ideal or ambition (the Revolutionary War, the Civil War). The War of 1812 does not satisfy any of these naming conventions; the war was fought across a huge range of geography from eastern Canada to Louisiana, between a diverse range of groups from Canadians and Native American tribes, with national armies getting involved very late in the war. While nominally fought over freedom the seas, the war quickly morphed into one about territorial ambition in North America. Of course, if the world were a place where people could agree on naming standards for wars, it is likely we would no longer have wars. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States .

(Miksa 1984, p. 3) .

For additional examples, (Shirky 2005) .

Cognitive Science has an even harder time finding its proper place in the LCC because it emerged as the intersection of psychology, linguistics, computer science, and other disciplines. Cognitive science books can be found scattered throughout the LCC , with concentrations in BF , P , and QA .

The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) first and foremost is focused on resource description and classification as means to business ends; this purpose contrasts with goals of DDC or LOC . BISG classifications are used for barcodes and shipping labels to support supply chain and inventory management, marketing, and promotion activities. See http://www.bisg.org/ .

See (Pope and Holley 2011) , (Samuelson 2010) .

What some call the “ Perry Rebellion ” or the “ Dewey Dilemma ” began in 2007 when the new Perry Branch Library in Gilbert, Arizona opened with its books classified using the BISAC rather than Dewey classifications. (Fister 2009) . This is a highly inflamed controversy that pits advocates of customer service and usability against the library establishment, which despises the idea of turning to retailing as inspiration when designing and operating a library. Even if BISAC gets more widely adopted in public libraries it is unimaginable that it can be used in research libraries.

The Discipline of Organizing: 4th Professional Edition Copyright © 2020 by Robert J. Glushko is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Research Process: Bibliographic Information

• Selecting a Topic
• Background Information
• Narrowing the Topic
• Library Terms
• Generating Keywords
• Boolean Operators
• Search Engine Strategies
• Google Searching
• Basic Internet Terms
• Research & The Web
• Search Engines
• Evaluating Books
• Evaluating Articles
• Evaluating Websites

Bibliographic Information

• Off Campus Access
• Periodical Locator

What is a bibliography?

A bibliography is a list of works on a subject or by an author that were used or consulted to write a research paper, book or article. It can also be referred to as a list of works cited. It is usually found at the end of a book, article or research paper. 

Gathering Information

Regardless of what citation style is being used, there are key pieces of information that need to be collected in order to create the citation.

For books and/or journals:

• Author name
• Title of publication 
• Article title (if using a journal)
• Date of publication
• Place of publication
• Volume number of a journal, magazine or encyclopedia
• Page number(s)

For websites:

• Author and/or editor name
• Title of the website
• Company or organization that owns or posts to the website
• URL (website address)
• Date of access 

This section provides two examples of the most common cited sources: a print book and an online journal retrieved from a research database. 

Book - Print

For print books, bibliographic information can be found on the  TITLE PAGE . This page has the complete title of the book, author(s) and publication information.

The publisher information will vary according to the publisher - sometimes this page will include the name of the publisher, the place of publication and the date.

For this example :  Book title: HTML, XHTML, and CSS Bible Author: Steven M. Schafer Publisher: Wiley Publications, Inc.

If you cannot find the place or date of publication on the title page, refer to the  COPYRIGHT PAGE  for this information. The copyright page is the page behind the title page, usually written in a small font, it carries the copyright notice, edition information, publication information, printing history, cataloging data, and the ISBN number.

For this example : Place of publication: Indianapolis, IN Date of publication: 2010

Article - Academic OneFile Database

In the article view:

Bibliographic information can be found under the article title, at the top of the page. The information provided in this area is  NOT  formatted according to any style.

Citations can also be found at the bottom of the page; in an area titled  SOURCE CITATION . The database does not specify which style is used in creating this citation, so be sure to double check it against the style rules for accuracy.

Article - ProQuest Database

Bibliographic information can be found under the article title, at the top of the page. The information provided in this area is  NOT  formatted according to any style. 

Bibliographic information can also be found at the bottom of the page; in an area titled  INDEXING . (Not all the information provided in this area is necessary for creating citations, refer to the rules of the style being used for what information is needed.)

Other databases have similar formats - look for bibliographic information under the article titles and below the article body, towards the bottom of the page. 

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Reference Accuracy: Authors', Reviewers', Editors', and Publishers' Contributions

Edward f. barroga.

Department of International Medical Communications, Tokyo Medical University, 6-7-1 Nishishinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, Japan.

Scientific authors are responsible for the accuracy of their writings and references to others' works. However, relying on authors is not enough when it comes to processing their manuscripts. Joint efforts of authors, peer reviewers, editors, and publishers throughout the publishing process may prevent most reference errors. This article analyzes essential aspects of bibliographic management and focuses on the importance of validating references by all stakeholders of scholarly publishing.

INTRODUCTION

Properly selected references give credibility to scholarly articles and credit previous contributions of others working in the same field ( 1 ). They enable hypothesis formulation and sourcing of the original works in this rapidly developing digital age of publishing. Studies in the predigital era reported numerous mistakes with referencing due to the carelessness of both authors and publishers. However, the decades-long problem has not vanished; the reference error rates in academic publishing are still high ( 2 ).

It is increasingly important to unite efforts of authors, peer reviewers, editors, and publishers to improve bibliographic management and accuracy of citations throughout the publishing process. Current trends in measuring scientific impact at individual and journal levels make reference validation an absolute necessity ( 3 , 4 ).

The aim of this article was to analyze essential aspects of bibliographic management and highlight the importance of reference validation by all stakeholders of scholarly publishing.

REFERENCES AND CITATIONS

Functions of references and citations.

References provide a means for acknowledging previous publications, integrating new studies with previous research works, and identifying primary sources supporting authors' statements ( 2 ). They facilitate continuity and novelty of research by avoiding redundant work. Previous publications may drive the scientific discourse and arguments. Acknowledging all pertinent sources may foster an exchange of ideas and data.

Proper citations scrutinize cited works and aid in elaborating new concepts ( 5 ). Authors should pick accessible and validated references to enable verification of the original sources by evaluators. It is therefore important to cite primarily peer-reviewed sources passed through multiple checks by reviewers and editors ( 1 ).

Searching references

Authors should be skilled to search and cite references. Searches are largely dependent on ideas behind the objectives of research studies, and can be done through multidisciplinary and/or specialized databases by setting time limits, languages of the required sources, and article types ( 6 ). Authors themselves are responsible for correct searches, which can be expanded by legitimate requests of peer reviewers.

Accuracy of references

Inaccurate reference lists negatively affect the indexability and influence of a scholarly journal. Authors who cite references without retrieving and reading related full-texts may increase inaccuracies. To some extent, such practice is driven by skewed perceptions of the role of citations in boosting the notorious Impact Factor (IF) ( 5 ).

Accurate referencing is crucial for allowing readers to follow the flow of ideas and statements in scholarly works and for ensuring the integrity of science communication. Incorrect citation of author names, journal titles, volumes, or page numbers makes it difficult or even impossible to locate primary sources. Irrelevant in-text citations may result in the misrepresentation of the sources and dissemination of unchecked statements, ultimately raising concerns over 'vanity publishing'.

Referencing in the digital age

Online publishing has changed reference formatting and interlinking. As a prime example, tagging sources with Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) has made them more functional and easily searchable. Open access movement and availability of various online communication and archiving platforms (e.g., blogs, Research Gate, LinkedIn) have increased the use and functionality of references.

In the digital era, new scholarly sources have emerged and add more complexity to reference formatting and citing. For instance, web-based materials require listing correct URL linking routes and access dates to facilitate re-access by readers at least within a certain period.

In line with the digitization, reference management software tools have emerged to generate text reference citations. However, these software tools may become cumbersome and duplicate references ( 1 ). They rarely correct chronological and alphabetical arranging details when several references are grouped together at first use ( 1 ). To overcome such problems, authors may use several software tools to manage their references and bibliographies in different styles (e.g., EndNote) ( 2 ).

Ensuring accuracy by reference linking

Currently, individual and journal impact indicators influence academic promotion and research grant allocation globally. These indicators are heavily dependent on the accuracy of references. Electronic publishing now provides reference linking and swift navigation from primary and secondary sources ( 4 ). Importantly, reference linking not only cites a related work, but also provides a clickable link to additional information presented in the work ( 4 ). For instance, many publishers now provide e-links to gene sequences, chemical structures, multimedia, and Web data.

Impact analyses now consider the frequency, directions, and networks of citations in scholarly articles. In some cases, these may reveal 'citation cartels', abundant auto-citations and other inappropriate citation practices, which disqualify individuals and journals. Citation analyses are thus impossible with inaccurate references.

Current strategies of navigating through the references by CrossRef matching, Highwire, PubMed linking, or XML-encoding help in detecting and correcting inaccuracies. Many large publishers have already incorporated these navigation systems in the peer review systems.

DUTIES OF STAKEHOLDERS

Duties of authors.

Different styles of citing scholarly works have been practiced globally ( 5 ). The citing styles range from selective citation of studies to support the authors' statements, referring to the studies that support the authors' viewpoints, auto-citations to boost the authors' own reputation, or citations for convenience. Some authors refer to the sources, including grey literature without reading and understanding their entirety. Others give multiple examples of similar references to support a single statement or, conversely, use a single source to support multiple statements.

Basically, the relevance and accuracy of cited references reflect the authors' professionalism and writing skills. The authors' duty is to continuously upgrade their skills of processing scholarly information and referring to essential sources. They are prime contributors to the accuracy of formatting in accordance with the target journal's instructions. Rechecking the relevance and format of each reference by searching through evidence-based bibliographic databases is also the authors' responsibility toward their readers ( 7 ).

Editors' role

By filtering quality submissions, journal editors should pay attention to the overall quality and relevance of the references. They can instruct the reviewers and authors on proper validation of cited sources. Some editors may also take a step forward and organize online or on-site training courses for their authors on acceptable citation styles and formatting.

An important issue for editors is to set quantitative limits for reference lists in the instructions for authors and avoid referencing duplicate and retracted items, which may threaten the trustworthiness of science communication ( 8 ).

Authors' editors, who edit manuscripts at presubmission and resubmission stages, should also take an active part in selecting, verifying, and formatting references. This task requires from them deep knowledge of the role of references in the 'big science' era and the magnitude of any (un)intentional error.

Reviewers' role

Peer reviewers are the gatekeepers of current scholarly communications who are in the best position to pick incorrect or irrelevant references and suggest amendments. They should recheck the relevance and correctness of the reference lists, advise ethically sound additional references (preferably not auto-citations), or suggest shortening the lists by omitting redundant and retracted sources. Adding references is particularly required when the authors' statements are neither their own words of wisdom nor general knowledge.

Publishers' role

A growing number of publishers use editorial management software to digitize the validation of references by the reviewers. Such an approach may increase the efficiency of publishing reliable and highly informative reference lists. Journals still relying on manual checks and uncertain policies over reference validation risk to be excluded from the global pool of science communication.

Some publishers employ stringent copyediting mechanisms for reference checking ( 4 ). Copyeditors either work on original Word format files with or without macros for reference editing or use XML-based editing tools or typesetting software. Copyeditors are now also equipped with access to multiple open and subscription platforms and databases, helping them in locating references and correcting the lists.

Other publishers have implemented effective practices to improve reference linking ( 4 ). Higher link-matching rates are now achieved thanks to the rigorous copyediting supported by automated reference extraction and checking processes through Manuscript Central™ and Editorial Manager™ programs (e.g., Aries Systems' eXtyles technology, Thomson Reuters' ScholarOne, Inera's eXtyles, SPi's SPiCE) ( 4 ).

All stakeholders of scholarly publishing should take advantage of trainings in digital bibliographic management to further improve their skills in reference validation. With the advent of digital technologies for linking references, the interest toward proper citations and their use for bibliometric evaluations is growing.

Eight tips and questions for your bibliographic study in business and management research

• Open access
• Published: 18 May 2020
• Volume 70 , pages 307–312, ( 2020 )

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• Jörn H. Block 1 , 2 , 3 &
• Christian Fisch 1 , 2  

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Management Review Quarterly (MRQ) specializes in systematic literature reviews, meta analyses, replication studies, and bibliographic studies. Previous editorials published in MRQ provide authors with guidelines for performing systematic (narrative) literature reviews (Fisch and Block 2018 ) and replication studies (Block and Kuckertz 2018 ). In this editorial, we focus on bibliographic studies and outline eight tips that help authors to improve their bibliographic studies.

In contrast to systematic literature reviews, meta analyses, and replication studies, little information on best practices and guidelines exist on bibliographic studies (also known as bibliographic literature reviews). Over the last years, we saw a steady increase in the number of bibliographic studies submitted to MRQ. We attribute this rise to the better accessibility of bibliographic data and software packages that specialize in bibliographic analyses. Another antecedent of the increasing prevalence of bibliographic studies is the ongoing differentiation of business and management research into narrowly defined subdisciplines, which calls for studies that are interdisciplinary and ‘break the walls’. Well-conducted bibliographic studies can break those walls. They structure a field and detect links between disciplines, identify topic clusters, literature gaps and academic silos, and show the most impactful authors and their research. Yet, in contrast to narrative literature reviews, bibliographic literature reviews use quantitative and statistical methods to achieve this goal.

We currently observe a considerable heterogeneity in the type and quality of bibliographic studies submitted to MRQ. These submissions range from systematic narrative literature reviews erroneously labeled as bibliographic ones to purely technical citation analyses with little interpretation and discussion of the state of the art in the respective research field. Hence, there seems to be confusion in business and management research as to what a bibliographic study is and what defines its quality. The goal of this editorial is to reduce this confusion and help future authors of MRQ to craft bibliographic studies of high quality. In line with earlier MRQ editorials, we organize this editorial in eight tips and questions. Specifically, we outline suggestions that we perceive as crucial for every bibliographic study published in MRQ. Since bibliographic studies rely on a systematic collection of articles, this editorial shares many similarities with our editorial on systematic narrative literature reviews (Fisch and Block 2018 ) as well as as the editorial’s discussion and extension by Clark et al. ( 2020 ). We summarize the main commonalities and differences of the two forms of literature reviews in Table  1 .

Is your study really a bibliographic study? Although the term ‘bibliographic study’ is widely used in academic research, a clear definition is lacking. MRQ is interested in bibliographic studies, which we define as systematic literature reviews that analyze bibliographic data with bibliometric methods. Bibliographic data include, amongst others, author names, journal names, article titles, article keywords, article abstracts, and article publication years. These bibliographic data are collected and made available by bibliographic databases such as Web of Science (WoS) or Scopus. These databases also provide citation data. Bibliometric methods rely on statistical methods to analyze bibliographic and citation data. As noted above, many manuscripts submitted to MRQ are erroneously labeled as bibliographic studies as they do not use bibliometric (= statistical) methods and only provide lists of important and impactful studies, authors, topics, and journals. Compiling and providing such lists is an essential first step but does not qualify your study as a bibliographic study. Also, bibliographic studies should not be confused with annotated bibliographies, which comprise a list of references to important studies followed by a brief description of their content. MRQ sees annotated bibliographies as an important element of systematic narrative literature reviews.

Is your main research goal really to summarize the structure of a research field? Literature reviews can summarize the content and structure of a particular research field. While a narrative literature review aims to summarize the content of the studies of a particular research field, a bibliographic literature review focuses on assessing the structure of a particular research field. A description and summary of “simple” bibliographic data (e.g., authors, journal names) is too superficial to derive specific answers to particular research questions. Article titles, keywords, and abstracts are already more informative and can, for example, be used to identify topic clusters. Citation data helps to identify impactful articles, authors, and journals. Such data also facilitates the identification of topic clusters and allows the measurement of knowledge diffusion within and between disciplines.

Provide and motivate a research goal and explain why a bibliographic study is needed to achieve this goal. Your article’s abstract and introduction have an important motivational function. As such, carefully begin your study by delineating and motivating your research goal. In particular, carefully explain why you choose a bibliographic literature review to achieve this goal. In other words: inform the reader that the analysis of bibliographic data with bibliometric methods provides important insights regarding your research goal. In general, bibliographic studies are particularly useful to describe the structure of a research field (see tip 2 above) and its development over time because they help to identify topic clusters, author networks, literature gaps, and academic silos.

Identify the relevant literature in a broad, systematic, and reproducible way . A bibliographic study is a particular form of a systematic literature review. Hence, the literature search process should be transparent and reproducible. A detailed account of the search strategy is needed, which includes a description of the databases used, the search terms, and inclusion/exclusion criteria. Footnote 1 In particular, carefully choose your bibliographic database. For example, Scopus often has a broader coverage of journals than WoS and if you leave out some of the most important journals, that’s a problem. Note that the application of screening or inclusion criteria (e.g., only focusing on highly ranked journals) should be well-justified because the screening criteria can have crucial implications for the bibliographic data obtained and the results of the quantitative, bibliometric analysis that follows. Since bibliographic studies rely on a quantitative and objective approach to summarize the structure and trends of a field, the systematic approach to identifying the literature is, in our view, even more important than in interpretative and narrative forms of literature reviews. We also believe that the literature covered should be broader than in narrative literature reviews, for example, with regard to the journals or publication years considered.

Provide a map of the research field. While original empirical research articles typically begin their results section with descriptive statistics, bibliographic studies should commence with a description of the studies under investigation (i.e., a map of the field). For example, a good strategy is to provide a chronological view of the field (e.g., how has the number of studies evolved, how have the topics evolved, how have the outlets evolved), and to give an overview of the most influential authors, journals, and publications. The outline can be sorted by multiple criteria, such as the number of papers or different citation measures. Notice that different types of citation data exist and that you need to defend your approach and source of citation data. In our view, this map of the field is a critical part of any bibliographic study. Yet, a bibliographic study should not stop at that stage. Instead, you should use the map of the field as a starting point to dig deeper into your bibliographic data using bibliometric methods, as outlined in tip 6.

Clearly specify the methodological steps of your bibliometric analysis. As with most empirical and statistical analyses, performing a bibliometric analysis requires taking various methodological choices. For example, authors need to choose a software and need to carefully prepare the data to be used in the analysis, such as the keywords of articles used. Make a sensible choice about which keywords to include in the analysis. For example, including your original search terms as keywords may produce trivial results. While a lot of graphical illustrations exist in the field of bibliographic studies (e.g., to visualize citation clusters or links between authors), sometimes tables can be easier to understand and interpret than figures (which are also often in color and difficult to print). Carefully outline and motivate the choices made in this regard.

Use the full potential and range of bibliometric methods. A bibliographic study should rely on statistical tools to derive results. Hence, you should go beyond simple article and citation counts. Such measures can be used to provide a map of the field (see tip 5), but the main part of the bibliometric analysis should be build on more sophisticated, multivariate statistical analyses. Bibliometric or scientometric analysis has developed into a discipline itself and specialized journals exist, such as Scientometrics and the Journal of Informetrics. Some commonly applied bibliometric methods, which we would like to also see in MRQ manuscripts, include co-citation analysis, co-occurrence analysis, and bibliometric coupling. We require authors of bibliographic studies to use such methods as a basis for their statements about the structure as well as the thematic clusters and gaps in the field. Yet, try to use these tools in a meaningful way. Simply displaying sophisticated tables, figures, and graphs derived from bibliometric software tools can lead to an overly descriptive and confusing picture of the field. Try to identify a relevant and interesting “story” that is supported by your bibliographic data and bibliometric analyses. Good examples of articles that have followed this approach are Aliyev et al. ( 2019 ), Block et al. ( 2019 ), and Kumar et al. ( 2019 ).

The bibliometric analysis needs to serve a purpose and needs to contribute to your research goal. The bibliometric analysis is the core of a bibliographic study. The most common mistake we see in manuscripts submitted to MRQ is that authors perform bibliometric analyses for the sake of performing bibliometric analyses. We are not interested in such manuscripts because they do not structure the knowledge in our field, do not lead to a discussion of where we are and what we know, and do not provide an agenda for future research. Hence, make sure that your bibliometric analysis contributes to the overall goal of MRQ. Like a systematic narrative literature review, bibliographic studies must go beyond a mere descriptive summary of prior literature. They require the authors to interpret and discuss the development and state of the field and give suggestions for meaningful future research.

See Fisch and Block ( 2018 ) and the references cited therein for more tips on systematic literature search.

Aliyev F, Urkmez T, Wagner R (2019) A comprehensive look at luxury brand marketing research from 2000 to 2016: a bibliometric study and content analysis. Manag Rev Q 69(3):233–264

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Block J, Kuckertz A (2018) Seven principles of effective replication studies: strengthening the evidence base of management research. Manag Rev Q 68(4):355–359

Block J, Fisch C, Rehan F (2019) Religion and entrepreneurship: a map of the field and a bibliometric analysis. Manag Rev Q. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11301-019-00177-2 (forthcoming)

Clark WR, Clark LA, Raffo DM, Williams RI (2020) Extending Fisch and Block’s (2018) tips for a systematic review in management and business literature. Manag Rev Q. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11301-020-00184-8 (forthcoming)

Fisch C, Block J (2018) Six tips for your (systematic) literature review in business and management research. Manag Rev Q 68(2):103–106

Kumar S, Sureka R, Colombage S (2019) Capital structure of SMEs: a systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis. Manag Rev Q. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11301-019-00175-4E (forthcoming)

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What is Bibliography?: Meaning, Types, and Importance

A bibliography is a fundamental component of academic research and writing that serves as a comprehensive list of sources consulted and referenced in a particular work. It plays a crucial role in validating the credibility and reliability of the information presented by providing readers with the necessary information to locate and explore the cited sources. A well-constructed bibliography not only demonstrates the depth and breadth of research undertaken but also acknowledges the intellectual contributions of others, ensuring transparency and promoting the integrity of scholarly work. By including a bibliography, writers enable readers to delve further into the subject matter, engage in critical analysis, and build upon existing knowledge.

1.1 What is a Bibliography?

A bibliography is a compilation of sources that have been utilized in the process of researching and writing a piece of work. It serves as a comprehensive list of references, providing information about the various sources consulted, such as books, articles, websites, and other materials. The purpose of a bibliography is twofold: to give credit to the original authors or creators of the sources used and to allow readers to locate and access those sources for further study or verification. A well-crafted bibliography includes essential details about each source, including the author’s name, the title of the work, publication date, and publication information. By having a bibliography, writers demonstrate the extent of their research, provide a foundation for their arguments, and enhance the credibility and reliability of their work.

1.2 Types of Bibliography.

The bibliography is a multifaceted discipline encompassing different types, each designed to serve specific research purposes and requirements. These various types of bibliographies provide valuable tools for researchers, scholars, and readers to navigate the vast realm of literature and sources available. From comprehensive overviews to specialized focuses, the types of bibliographies offer distinct approaches to organizing, categorizing, and presenting information. Whether compiling an exhaustive list of sources, providing critical evaluations, or focusing on specific subjects or industries, these types of bibliographies play a vital role in facilitating the exploration, understanding, and dissemination of knowledge in diverse academic and intellectual domains.

As a discipline, a bibliography encompasses various types that cater to different research needs and contexts. The two main categories of bibliographies are

1. General bibliography, and 2. Special bibliography.

1.2.1. General Bibliography:

A general bibliography is a comprehensive compilation of sources covering a wide range of subjects, disciplines, and formats. It aims to provide a broad overview of published materials, encompassing books, articles, journals, websites, and other relevant resources. A general bibliography typically includes works from various authors, covering diverse topics and spanning different periods. It is a valuable tool for researchers, students, and readers seeking a comprehensive collection of literature within a specific field or across multiple disciplines. General bibliographies play a crucial role in guiding individuals in exploring a subject, facilitating the discovery of relevant sources, and establishing a foundation for further research and academic pursuits.

The general bibliography encompasses various subcategories that comprehensively cover global, linguistic, national, and regional sources. These subcategories are as follows:

• Universal Bibliography: Universal bibliography aims to compile a comprehensive list of all published works worldwide, regardless of subject or language. It seeks to encompass human knowledge and includes sources from diverse fields, cultures, and periods. Universal bibliography is a monumental effort to create a comprehensive record of the world’s published works, making it a valuable resource for scholars, librarians, and researchers interested in exploring the breadth of human intellectual output.
• Language Bibliography: Language bibliography focuses on compiling sources specific to a particular language or group of languages. It encompasses publications written in a specific language, regardless of the subject matter. Language bibliographies are essential for language scholars, linguists, and researchers interested in exploring the literature and resources available in a particular language or linguistic group.
• National Bibliography: The national bibliography documents and catalogs all published materials within a specific country. It serves as a comprehensive record of books, journals, periodicals, government publications, and other sources published within a nation’s borders. National bibliographies are essential for preserving a country’s cultural heritage, facilitating research within specific national contexts, and providing a comprehensive overview of a nation’s intellectual output.
• Regional Bibliography: A regional bibliography compiles sources specific to a particular geographic region or area. It aims to capture the literature, publications, and resources related to a specific region, such as a state, province, or local area. Regional bibliographies are valuable for researchers interested in exploring a specific geographic region’s literature, history, culture, and unique aspects.

1.2.2. Special Bibliography:

Special bibliography refers to a type of bibliography that focuses on specific subjects, themes, or niche areas within a broader field of study. It aims to provide a comprehensive and in-depth compilation of sources specifically relevant to the chosen topic. Special bibliographies are tailored to meet the research needs of scholars, researchers, and enthusiasts seeking specialized information and resources.

Special bibliographies can cover a wide range of subjects, including but not limited to specific disciplines, subfields, historical periods, geographical regions, industries, or even specific authors or works. They are designed to gather and present a curated selection of sources considered important, authoritative, or influential within the chosen subject area.

Special bibliography encompasses several subcategories that focus on specific subjects, authors, forms of literature, periods, categories of literature, and types of materials. These subcategories include:

• Subject Bibliography: Subject bibliography compiles sources related to a specific subject or topic. It aims to provide a comprehensive list of resources within a particular field. Subject bibliographies are valuable for researchers seeking in-depth information on a specific subject area, as they gather relevant sources and materials to facilitate focused research.
• Author and Bio-bibliographies: Author and bio-bibliographies focus on compiling sources specific to individual authors. They provide comprehensive lists of an author’s works, including their books, articles, essays, and other publications. Bio-bibliographies include biographical information about the author, such as their background, career, and contributions to their respective fields.
• Bibliography of Forms of Literature: This bibliography focuses on specific forms or genres of literature, such as poetry, drama, fiction, or non-fiction. It provides a compilation of works within a particular literary form, enabling researchers to explore the literature specific to their interests or to gain a comprehensive understanding of a particular genre.
• Bibliography of Materials of Particular Periods: Bibliographies of materials of particular periods compile sources specific to a particular historical period or time frame. They include works published or created during that period, offering valuable insights into the era’s literature, art, culture, and historical context.
• Bibliographies of Special Categories of Literature: This category compiles sources related to special categories or themes. Examples include bibliographies of children’s literature, feminist literature, postcolonial literature, or science fiction literature. These bibliographies cater to specific interests or perspectives within the broader field of literature.
• Bibliographies of Specific Types of Materials: Bibliographies of specific materials focus on compiling sources within a particular format or medium. Examples include bibliographies of manuscripts, rare books, visual art, films, or musical compositions. These bibliographies provide valuable resources for researchers interested in exploring a specific medium or format.

1.3 Functions of Bibliography

A bibliography serves several important functions in academic research, writing, and knowledge dissemination. Here are some key functions:

• Documentation: One of the primary functions of a bibliography is to document and record the sources consulted during the research process. By providing accurate and detailed citations for each source, it can ensure transparency, traceability, and accountability in scholarly work. It allows readers and other researchers to verify the information, trace the origins of ideas, and locate the original sources for further study.
• Attribution and Credit: The bibliography plays a crucial role in giving credit to the original authors and creators of the ideas, information, and materials used in research work. By citing the sources, the authors acknowledge the intellectual contributions of others and demonstrate academic integrity. This enables proper attribution and prevents plagiarism, ensuring ethical research practices and upholding the principles of academic honesty.
• Verification and Quality Control: It acts as a means of verification and quality control in academic research. Readers and reviewers can assess the information’s reliability, credibility, and accuracy by including a list of sources. This allows others to evaluate the strength of the evidence, assess the validity of the arguments, and determine the scholarly rigor of a work.
• Further Reading and Exploration: The bibliography is valuable for readers who wish to delve deeper into a particular subject or topic. By providing a list of cited sources, the bibliography offers a starting point for further reading and exploration. It guides readers to related works, seminal texts, and authoritative materials, facilitating their intellectual growth and expanding their knowledge base.
• Preservation of Knowledge: The bibliography contributes to the preservation of knowledge by cataloguing and documenting published works. It records the intellectual output within various fields, ensuring that valuable information is not lost over time. A bibliography facilitates the organization and accessibility of literature, making it possible to locate and retrieve sources for future reference and research.
• Intellectual Dialogue and Scholarship: The bibliography fosters intellectual dialogue and scholarship by facilitating the exchange of ideas and enabling researchers to build upon existing knowledge. By citing relevant sources, researchers enter into conversations with other scholars, engaging in a scholarly discourse that advances knowledge within their field of study.

A bibliography serves the important functions of documenting sources, crediting original authors, verifying information, guiding further reading, preserving knowledge, and fostering intellectual dialogue. It plays a crucial role in maintaining academic research’s integrity, transparency, and quality and ensures that scholarly work is built upon a solid foundation of evidence and ideas.

1.4 Importance of Bibliographic Services

Bibliographic services are crucial in academia, research, and information management. They are a fundamental tool for organizing, accessing, and preserving knowledge . From facilitating efficient research to ensuring the integrity and credibility of scholarly work, bibliographic services hold immense importance in various domains.

Bibliographic services are vital for researchers and scholars. These services provide comprehensive and reliable access to various resources, such as books, journals, articles, and other scholarly materials. By organizing these resources in a structured manner, bibliographic services make it easier for researchers to locate relevant information for their studies. Researchers can explore bibliographic databases, catalogues, and indexes to identify appropriate sources, saving them valuable time and effort. This accessibility enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of research, enabling scholars to stay up-to-date with the latest developments in their fields.

Bibliographic services also aid in the process of citation and referencing. Proper citation is an essential aspect of academic integrity and intellectual honesty. Bibliographic services assist researchers in accurately citing the sources they have used in their work, ensuring that credit is given where it is due. This not only acknowledges the original authors and their contributions but also strengthens the credibility and authenticity of the research. By providing citation guidelines, formatting styles, and citation management tools, bibliographic services simplify the citation process, making it more manageable for researchers.

Another crucial aspect of bibliographic services is their role in preserving and archiving knowledge. Libraries and institutions that provide bibliographic services serve as custodians of valuable information. They collect, organize, and preserve various physical and digital resources for future generations. This preservation ensures that knowledge is not lost or forgotten over time. Bibliographic services enable researchers, students, and the general public to access historical and scholarly materials, fostering continuous learning and intellectual growth.

Bibliographic services contribute to the dissemination of research and scholarly works. They provide platforms and databases for publishing and sharing academic outputs. By cataloguing and indexing research articles, journals, and conference proceedings, bibliographic services enhance the discoverability and visibility of scholarly work. This facilitates knowledge exchange, collaboration, and innovation within academic communities. Researchers can rely on bibliographic services to share their findings with a broader audience, fostering intellectual dialogue and advancing their respective fields.

In Summary, bibliographic services are immensely important in academia, research, and information management. They facilitate efficient analysis, aid in proper citation and referencing, preserve knowledge for future generations, and contribute to the dissemination of research. These services form the backbone of scholarly pursuits, enabling researchers, students, and professionals to access, utilize, and contribute to the vast wealth of knowledge available. As we continue to rely on information and research to drive progress and innovation, the significance of bibliographic services will only grow, making them indispensable resources in pursuing knowledge.

References:

• Reddy, P. V. G. (1999). Bio bibliography of the faculty in social sciences departments of Sri Krishnadevaraya university Anantapur A P India.
• Sharma, J.S. Fundamentals of Bibliography, New Delhi : S. Chand & Co.. Ltd.. 1977.  p.5.
• Quoted in George Schneider, Theory of History of Bibliography. Ralph Robert Shaw, trans., New York : Scare Crow Press, 1934, p.13.
• Funk Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of the English language – International ed – Vol. I – New York : Funku Wagnalls Co., C 1965, p. 135.
• Shores, Louis. Basic reference sources. Chicago : American Library Association, 1954. p. 11-12.
• Ranganathan, S.R., Documentation and its facts. Bombay : Asia Publishing House. 1963. p.49.
• Katz, William A. Introduction to reference work. 4th ed. New York : McGraw Hill, 1982. V. 1, p.42.
• Robinson, A.M.L. Systematic Bibliography. Bombay : Asia Publishing House, 1966. p.12.
• Chakraborthi, M.L. Bibliography : In Theory and practice, Calcutta : The World press (P) Ltd.. 1975. p.343.

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National bibliography, bibliographic services.

This site was… how do I say it? Relevant!! Finally I’ve found something which helped me. Thanks!

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Thank for your detailed explanation,the work really help me to understand bibliography more than I knew it before.

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Annotated Bibliographies

What this handout is about.

This handout will explain why annotated bibliographies are useful for researchers, provide an explanation of what constitutes an annotation, describe various types of annotations and styles for writing them, and offer multiple examples of annotated bibliographies in the MLA, APA, and CBE/CSE styles of citation.

Introduction

Welcome to the wonderful world of annotated bibliographies! You’re probably already familiar with the need to provide bibliographies, reference pages, and works cited lists to credit your sources when you do a research paper. An annotated bibliography includes descriptions and explanations of your listed sources beyond the basic citation information you usually provide.

Why do an annotated bibliography?

One of the reasons behind citing sources and compiling a general bibliography is so that you can prove you have done some valid research to back up your argument and claims. Readers can refer to a citation in your bibliography and then go look up the material themselves. When inspired by your text or your argument, interested researchers can access your resources. They may wish to double check a claim or interpretation you’ve made, or they may simply wish to continue researching according to their interests. But think about it: even though a bibliography provides a list of research sources of all types that includes publishing information, how much does that really tell a researcher or reader about the sources themselves?

An annotated bibliography provides specific information about each source you have used. As a researcher, you have become an expert on your topic: you have the ability to explain the content of your sources, assess their usefulness, and share this information with others who may be less familiar with them. Think of your paper as part of a conversation with people interested in the same things you are; the annotated bibliography allows you to tell readers what to check out, what might be worth checking out in some situations, and what might not be worth spending the time on. It’s kind of like providing a list of good movies for your classmates to watch and then going over the list with them, telling them why this movie is better than that one or why one student in your class might like a particular movie better than another student would. You want to give your audience enough information to understand basically what the movies are about and to make an informed decision about where to spend their money based on their interests.

What does an annotated bibliography do?

A good annotated bibliography:

• encourages you to think critically about the content of the works you are using, their place within a field of study, and their relation to your own research and ideas.
• proves you have read and understand your sources.
• establishes your work as a valid source and you as a competent researcher.
• situates your study and topic in a continuing professional conversation.
• provides a way for others to decide whether a source will be helpful to their research if they read it.
• could help interested researchers determine whether they are interested in a topic by providing background information and an idea of the kind of work going on in a field.

What elements might an annotation include?

• Bibliography according to the appropriate citation style (MLA, APA, CBE/CSE, etc.).
• Explanation of main points and/or purpose of the work—basically, its thesis—which shows among other things that you have read and thoroughly understand the source.
• Verification or critique of the authority or qualifications of the author.
• Comments on the worth, effectiveness, and usefulness of the work in terms of both the topic being researched and/or your own research project.
• The point of view or perspective from which the work was written. For instance, you may note whether the author seemed to have particular biases or was trying to reach a particular audience.
• Relevant links to other work done in the area, like related sources, possibly including a comparison with some of those already on your list. You may want to establish connections to other aspects of the same argument or opposing views.

The first four elements above are usually a necessary part of the annotated bibliography. Points 5 and 6 may involve a little more analysis of the source, but you may include them in other kinds of annotations besides evaluative ones. Depending on the type of annotation you use, which this handout will address in the next section, there may be additional kinds of information that you will need to include.

For more extensive research papers (probably ten pages or more), you often see resource materials grouped into sub-headed sections based on content, but this probably will not be necessary for the kinds of assignments you’ll be working on. For longer papers, ask your instructor about their preferences concerning annotated bibliographies.

Did you know that annotations have categories and styles?

Decisions, decisions.

As you go through this handout, you’ll see that, before you start, you’ll need to make several decisions about your annotations: citation format, type of annotation, and writing style for the annotation.

First of all, you’ll need to decide which kind of citation format is appropriate to the paper and its sources, for instance, MLA or APA. This may influence the format of the annotations and bibliography. Typically, bibliographies should be double-spaced and use normal margins (you may want to check with your instructor, since they may have a different style they want you to follow).

MLA (Modern Language Association)

See the UNC Libraries citation tutorial for basic MLA bibliography formatting and rules.

• MLA documentation is generally used for disciplines in the humanities, such as English, languages, film, and cultural studies or other theoretical studies. These annotations are often summary or analytical annotations.
• Title your annotated bibliography “Annotated Bibliography” or “Annotated List of Works Cited.”
• Following MLA format, use a hanging indent for your bibliographic information. This means the first line is not indented and all the other lines are indented four spaces (you may ask your instructor if it’s okay to tab over instead of using four spaces).
• Begin your annotation immediately after the bibliographic information of the source ends; don’t skip a line down unless you have been told to do so by your instructor.

APA (American Psychological Association)

See the UNC Libraries citation tutorial for basic APA bibliography formatting and rules.

• Natural and social sciences, such as psychology, nursing, sociology, and social work, use APA documentation. It is also used in economics, business, and criminology. These annotations are often succinct summaries.
• Annotated bibliographies for APA format do not require a special title. Use the usual “References” designation.
• Like MLA, APA uses a hanging indent: the first line is set flush with the left margin, and all other lines are indented four spaces (you may ask your instructor if it’s okay to tab over instead of using four spaces).
• After the bibliographic citation, drop down to the next line to begin the annotation, but don’t skip an extra line.
• The entire annotation is indented an additional two spaces, so that means each of its lines will be six spaces from the margin (if your instructor has said that it’s okay to tab over instead of using the four spaces rule, indent the annotation two more spaces in from that point).

CBE (Council of Biology Editors)/CSE (Council of Science Editors)

See the UNC Libraries citation tutorial for basic CBE/CSE bibliography formatting and rules.

• CBE/CSE documentation is used by the plant sciences, zoology, microbiology, and many of the medical sciences.
• Annotated bibliographies for CBE/CSE format do not require a special title. Use the usual “References,” “Cited References,” or “Literature Cited,” and set it flush with the left margin.
• Bibliographies for CSE in general are in a slightly smaller font than the rest of the paper.
• When using the name-year system, as in MLA and APA, the first line of each entry is set flush with the left margin, and all subsequent lines, including the annotation, are indented three or four spaces.
• When using the citation-sequence method, each entry begins two spaces after the number, and every line, including the annotation, will be indented to match the beginning of the entry, or may be slightly further indented, as in the case of journals.
• After the bibliographic citation, drop down to the next line to begin the annotation, but don’t skip an extra line. The entire annotation follows the indentation of the bibliographic entry, whether it’s N-Y or C-S format.
• Annotations in CBE/CSE are generally a smaller font size than the rest of the bibliographic information.

After choosing a documentation format, you’ll choose from a variety of annotation categories presented in the following section. Each type of annotation highlights a particular approach to presenting a source to a reader. For instance, an annotation could provide a summary of the source only, or it could also provide some additional evaluation of that material.

In addition to making choices related to the content of the annotation, you’ll also need to choose a style of writing—for instance, telescopic versus paragraph form. Your writing style isn’t dictated by the content of your annotation. Writing style simply refers to the way you’ve chosen to convey written information. A discussion of writing style follows the section on annotation types.

Types of annotations

As you now know, one annotation does not fit all purposes! There are different kinds of annotations, depending on what might be most important for your reader to learn about a source. Your assignments will usually make it clear which citation format you need to use, but they may not always specify which type of annotation to employ. In that case, you’ll either need to pick your instructor’s brain a little to see what they want or use clue words from the assignment itself to make a decision. For instance, the assignment may tell you that your annotative bibliography should give evidence proving an analytical understanding of the sources you’ve used. The word analytical clues you in to the idea that you must evaluate the sources you’re working with and provide some kind of critique.

Summary annotations

There are two kinds of summarizing annotations, informative and indicative.

Summarizing annotations in general have a couple of defining features:

• They sum up the content of the source, as a book report might.
• They give an overview of the arguments and proofs/evidence addressed in the work and note the resulting conclusion.
• They do not judge the work they are discussing. Leave that to the critical/evaluative annotations.
• When appropriate, they describe the author’s methodology or approach to material. For instance, you might mention if the source is an ethnography or if the author employs a particular kind of theory.

Informative annotation

Informative annotations sometimes read like straight summaries of the source material, but they often spend a little more time summarizing relevant information about the author or the work itself.

Indicative annotation

Indicative annotation is the second type of summary annotation, but it does not attempt to include actual information from the argument itself. Instead, it gives general information about what kinds of questions or issues are addressed by the work. This sometimes includes the use of chapter titles.

Critical/evaluative

Evaluative annotations don’t just summarize. In addition to tackling the points addressed in summary annotations, evaluative annotations:

• evaluate the source or author critically (biases, lack of evidence, objective, etc.).
• show how the work may or may not be useful for a particular field of study or audience.
• explain how researching this material assisted your own project.

Combination

An annotated bibliography may combine elements of all the types. In fact, most of them fall into this category: a little summarizing and describing, a little evaluation.

Writing style

Ok, next! So what does it mean to use different writing styles as opposed to different kinds of content? Content is what belongs in the annotation, and style is the way you write it up. First, choose which content type you need to compose, and then choose the style you’re going to use to write it

This kind of annotated bibliography is a study in succinctness. It uses a minimalist treatment of both information and sentence structure, without sacrificing clarity. Warning: this kind of writing can be harder than you might think.

Don’t skimp on this kind of annotated bibliography. If your instructor has asked for paragraph form, it likely means that you’ll need to include several elements in the annotation, or that they expect a more in-depth description or evaluation, for instance. Make sure to provide a full paragraph of discussion for each work.

As you can see now, bibliographies and annotations are really a series of organized steps. They require meticulous attention, but in the end, you’ve got an entire testimony to all the research and work you’ve done. At the end of this handout you’ll find examples of informative, indicative, evaluative, combination, telescopic, and paragraph annotated bibliography entries in MLA, APA, and CBE formats. Use these examples as your guide to creating an annotated bibliography that makes you look like the expert you are!

MLA Example

APA Example

CBE Example

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

American Psychological Association. 2010. Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association . 6th ed. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Bell, I. F., and J. Gallup. 1971. A Reference Guide to English, American, and Canadian Literature . Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.

Bizzell, Patricia, and Bruce Herzburg. 1991. Bedford Bibliography for Teachers of Writing , 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford Books.

Center for Information on Language Teaching, and The English Teaching Information Center of the British Council. 1968. Language-Teaching Bibliography . Cambridge: Cambridge University.

Engle, Michael, Amy Blumenthal, and Tony Cosgrave. 2012. “How to Prepare an Annotated Bibliography.” Olin & Uris Libraries. Cornell University. Last updated September 25, 2012. https://olinuris.library.cornell.edu/content/how-prepare-annotated-bibliography.

Gibaldi, Joseph. 2009. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers , 7th ed. New York: The Modern Language Association of America.

Huth, Edward. 1994. Scientific Style and Format: The CBE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers . New York: University of Cambridge.

Kilborn, Judith. 2004. “MLA Documentation.” LEO: Literacy Education Online. Last updated March 16, 2004. https://leo.stcloudstate.edu/research/mla.html.

Spatt, Brenda. 1991. Writing from Sources , 3rd ed. New York: St. Martin’s.

University of Kansas. 2018. “Bibliographies.” KU Writing Center. Last updated April 2018. http://writing.ku.edu/bibliographies .

University of Wisconsin-Madison. 2019. “Annotated Bibliography.” The Writing Center. Accessed June 14, 2019. https://writing.wisc.edu/handbook/assignments/annotatedbibliography/ .

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, 2nd edition. An international standard for the cataloging of all types of materials collected by general libraries. AACR2 has now been superseded by RDA: Resource Description and Access.

Brief records (Encoding Level 3) that do not meet the requirements of minimal-level cataloging specifications.

A shortened version of the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system that is a logical truncation of the notational and structural hierarchy of the corresponding full edition on which it is based. The abridged edition is intended for general collections of 20,000 titles or fewer.  See also Full edition (DDC) .

A brief summary that classifies, evaluates or describes the important points in the content of a journal article or library resource to help the reader quickly ascertain the resource's purpose. See also Full text .

A library that is an integral part of a college, university, or other institution of post-secondary education, administered to meet the curriculum and research needs of its students, faculty, and staff.

A combination of the Alt key and one or more alphanumeric keys, typically pressed sequentially, rather than simultaneously. Sometimes referred to as Hot keys. In the Connexion client interface, the underlined letters on menus, sub-menus, and commands (e.g., <Alt><V><U> opens the User Information window in the client). Access keys are available for all client commands.

Method used to log on to a service, download records or reports, or locate additional information. For example, a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is used to find information on the Internet.

A name, term, code, etc., representing a specific entity that is indexed.

An identification or inventory number assigned to an item in a library's collection. 

See Record Manager account role .

In Connexion client, an indicator in a bibliographic record that designates what actions have been taken and the outcome of each action. If taken, the following actions appear in the status bar of a displayed record: Delete Holdings, Export, Label, Produce, Submit, Replace, Report Error, Update Holdings, and Validate. In Connexion browser, the following actions appear in the status bar of a displayed record: Delete Holdings, Export, Label, Produce, Update Holdings, and Validate. For each action taken, a one-character code indicates that the action completed successfully (C), failed (F), or is ready for batch processing (R).

To load an original record into the bibliographic or authority database. If using Data Sync, a record is added after Data Sync routines cannot find a match for it. The bibliographic record may not necessarily start out as an original record at the institution's end.

A secondary access point for the resource. Added entry is a pre-RDA term.

American Library Association. The oldest and largest library association in the world. See the document  About ALA for more information.

ALA-defined characters used in MARC records, including standard alphabetic characters, diacritics, special characters, 14 superscript characters, 14 subscript characters, and 3 Greek characters.  Also known as the MARC8 character set, these were the only characters valid in MARC records prior to the implementation of Unicode.

Records for the same resource, but using different cataloging languages. See also Duplicate record and Parallel records .

See AACR2 .

American National Standards Institute. A nonprofit non-governmental organization composed of representatives from business and professional organizations that acts as the repository for various voluntary standards. See the document  About ANSI for more information. See also ISO .

Specifies display requirements for holdings statements for bibliographic resources to promote consistency in the communication and exchange of holdings information. The standard applies to holdings statements for bibliographic resources in any physical or electronic medium. It may be applied to electronic resources available to an institution, either under its control, or available under other arrangements. It applies to both manual and automated means of recording holdings.

Any is the implied default qualifier in all WorldCat index searches. If you do not qualify a search, the qualifier is any .

Prior to 2016, the bibliographic record OCLC created and stored contained local changes made by an institution to the WorldCat record. Archive records provided a complete history of an institution’s OCLC cataloging activity. OCLC used archive records to create offline products—catalog cards, magnetic tapes of records, and electronic files of records. After 2016, institutions could maintain local data in OCLC local bibliographic data (LBD) records.

An online service that provides access to detailed archival collection descriptions. It includes millions of descriptions of archival collections held by thousands of libraries, museums, historical societies, and archives worldwide.

Historical records, regardless of format, which are maintained and preserved because of their permanent legal, fiscal, regulatory, evidential, informational, or historical value. Materials that are archived are usually permanently retained.

Authority Record Number. OCLC-assigned control number for authority records in the LC names and subjects authority file.

American Standard Code for Information Interchange. A standard computer character code set, consisting of alphanumeric characters, punctuation, and a few control characters (such as a carriage return). Each ASCII character consists of 7 information bits and 1 parity bit for error checking.

Verifies an access point in a bibliographic record against an internal or external authority file such as the Library of Congress Authority File and, if a matching authority record exists, links the access point to the corresponding authority record. If the authority record is updated, the controlled (linked) access point in bibliographic records is updated automatically.

See   OCLC Authority file .

Copies of all distributed Library of Congress authority file records, superseded versions of distributed records, and deleted records. Retrieve these records in Connexion client using these instructions . Retrieve these records in Record Manager using these instructions .

A collection of information about a name (personal, corporate, family, or meeting), preferred title, or subject term (topical, geographic, genre, etc.). An authority record can contain the authorized access point, see from references, see also from references, and notes.

Defines a range of tasks that can be performed when logged on to a service within Connexion Client and Browser. Also called authorization mode. For complete list, see the document Bibliographic Formats and Standards 5.2.1 .  See also Record Manager account role .

Number assigned by OCLC to authorize use of OCLC services in Connexion Client and Browser, used in conjunction with a password.

See   Record Manager account role .

An access point, representing an entity, formulated according to a specified standard.

A means for libraries to define a set of automated actions the resource sharing system should perform on requests. These actions can involve sending patron-generated requests directly to lenders or having the system build a lender string and apply constant data. Library staff determine both the match criteria requests should meet to have automated actions performed as well as the actions themselves. Formerly known as Direct Request.

In WorldCat Discovery, indicates the institution from which a library resource may be obtained via Interlibrary Loan.

See   Batchloading .

A process of sending and completing a group or batch of searches or final actions in Connexion client. Searches may be for bibliographic or authority records and are effectively limitless (restricted only by the size of your hard drive). Using client local files (stored on the cataloger's workstation), the cataloger enters search strings and/or marks saved records for actions and then initiates batch processing. The client automatically logs onto the system, runs searches and/or performs the actions, and produces a report within the client for the results. While local records can hold a maximum of 9,999 records, Connexion users can run as many local files as desired in a single batch.

In Connexion client only, a search entered in command line format (full search syntax) and added to a list stored in a local file for batch processing.

A service by which records were matched and/or added to WorldCat in batches. The batchloading service was replaced by OCLC Data Sync in 2017.  See also   Data Sync .

Monographic Bibliographic Record Cooperative Program (BIBCO) is one of the programs of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC).  BIBCO participants contribute monographic bibliographic records in all formats to WorldCat and other international databases.  Records meet or exceed the BIBCO Standard Record (BSR) requirements and have the "pcc" code in the 042 field. See also PCC .

A file consisting of electronic entries called records, each containing a uniform description of a specific document or bibliographic item, usually retrievable by author, title, subject heading (descriptor), or keyword(s). Some bibliographic databases are general in scope and coverage; others provide access to the literature of a specific discipline or group of disciplines. A number provide full-text of at least a portion of the sources indexed. Most bibliographic databases are proprietary, available by licensing agreement from vendors, or directly from the abstracting and indexing services that create them.

The standardized sequence, and manner of presentation of the data elements constituting the full description of a resource in a specific cataloging or indexing system. The machine-readable MARC record format has become the standard for library catalogs in many countries of the world. OCLC refers to eight bibliographic formats. In Connexion, the bibliographic formats correspond to the workforms used to create new bibliographic records. In WorldShare Record Manager, these workforms are known as material type templates.  See also Books format , Computer Files format , Continuing Resources format , Maps format , Mixed Materials format , Scores format , Sound Recordings format , and Visual Materials format .

The guide to MARC bibliographic records in WorldCat. It provides tagging conventions, input standards, and guidelines for entering information into WorldCat. See the document  Bibliographic Formats and Standards .

A description of the physical or virtual format and intellectual content of a single resource (a book, video, map, etc.) encoded in a standardized format such as MARC. 

Commonly referred to as BibNote.  See WorldCat Updates .

A report that displays a summary of bibliographic and holdings actions for records in WorldCat after processing a batch of records using the OCLC Data Sync service. See also OCLC usage statistics .

In Connexion and Record Manager, a shared online working storage area used for completing new or modifying existing WorldCat bibliographic records. In Connexion client, a local file (on your workstation or network) is also available. A limit of 9,999 records exists for either online file or local file(s).

Informal name for Bibliographic Record Notification Service. See WorldCat Updates .

See Books format .

The WorldShare Interlibrary Loan template for creating an interlibrary loan request, or in Connexion, a cataloging template for creating new records. Also known as blank MARC workform in Record Manager.

The part of a call number that distinguishes a specific item from other items within the same class number, also called a Cutter number. A book number is composed of letters from the author's name or letters from the title main entry and numbers. There are several systems for creating book numbers.  See also Work mark .

OCLC-MARC Bibliographic format used for cataloging monographic non-manuscript language or textual material (including all published print language material, original microform publications of language material, microform reproductions of published language material, and published textual electronic resources). The three-character format designator and index qualifier for books is "BKS".

Library books that are commonly lost, stolen, vandalized, or misshelved. These items are usually popular titles and can cover a wide range of subjects and issues.

Terms such as AND, OR, and NOT, used in Boolean logic to combine search terms. AND finds only records that contain both terms. OR finds records that contain either term. NOT finds records that contain the first term but not the second term. Combining search terms produces more precise and manageable search results.

A system of logical thought developed by English mathematician George Boole (1815-64). A Boolean search combines key concepts or search terms with operators to specify the exact information required in a database search. See Boolean operators .

Descriptive information that has been provided by the cataloger added to a bibliographic record inside square brackets ([ ]).

Default display of WorldCat search results when a Connexion search retrieves 2 to 5 records.  See also Group list and Truncated list .

To scan an index for a match or the closest match to a word or phrase in records. The system matches the exact text string—character by character, from left to right—against the characters in the specified index and produces a browse list that highlights the closest match and shows the number of records for each item in the list. Clicking an entry opens the record or a record list, if multiple records match.  See also Scan .

WorldShare Interlibrary Loan sequential days, including weekends and holidays.  See also   System days .

A set of letters, numerals, or other symbols (in combination or alone) used by a library to identify a specific copy of a resource. A call number may consist of the class number; book number; and other data such as date, volume number, copy number, and location symbol. A call number indicates the relative position of the copy on the shelf, facilitating browsing.

Catalog of Art Museum Images Online. Developed by Research Libraries Group (RLG), a database of artwork images.

See Delete Holdings .

Historical term: One of the previous OCLC regional networks, formerly known as both OCLC CAPCON and then as OCLC Eastern. It was the OCLC service center for libraries in the Washington D.C.

See Circumflex .

Describes data you can enter in uppercase, lowercase, and mixed case. You do not have to match the case exactly.

Describes data you must enter exactly as it appears, matching upper- and lower-case.

A Connexion authorization mode that allows the Cataloging Agent of an institution or a group to process cataloging records on a client's behalf. Agents may also process unresolved records from the group's Data Sync activity. Cataloging Agent role is also available for the WorldCat Metadata API.  See also   Processing center .

Initially a Library of Congress program, now offered by many national libraries, providing bibliographic data for new resources in advance of publication. Commonly referred to as CIP, records are created from information supplied by publishers and supplied to publishers for printing in the books. These encoding level 8 bibliographic records are available for distribution and loading into bibliographic databases. 

An OCLC service that lets users of OCLC cataloging products easily print labels for library materials. The free Windows software manages the creation, display, editing, and printing of pocket and spine cataloging labels.

See OCLC cataloging profile .

The authority or bibliographic fixed-field element (008/39) has coded data indicating the source of the data. Abbreviations for this element differ depending upon the interface:

• Source (Connexion authority)       
• Srce (Connexion bibliographic)
• Cataloging Source Code (Record Manager authority and bibliographic)

In addition, the authority and bibliographic Cataloging Source field 040 indicates the agencies that created and/or edited the record in WorldCat.

Index used to limit WorldCat searches to records contributed by a specific library as identified by the library's OCLC symbol in MARC bibliographic field 040 $a or $c (example cs= OCL).

A web-based interface for copy cataloging, which can be used independently or in conjunction with a cataloging subscription for Collection Manager or Connexion.

CBS  means  C entraal  B ibliotheek  S ysteem in Dutch and translates to Central Library System in English. CBS systems have been developed as stand-alone regional and national systems.  CBS started in the 1980s in the Netherlands. CBS systems have also been implemented in Germany, France, Australia, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and Spain. CBS systems developed prior to wide-spread exchange of data and use their own data formats, such as MARC 21, UNIMARC, MAB, and PICA3, all having their own local flavor. PICA+ is the generic term for the internal data format used in CBS systems.

See Wildcard (# or ?) .

Types of dates used by publishers to identify the individual bibliographic unit of a serial, for example, date of coverage, date of publication, or date of printing.

An abbreviation referring to the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages and characters sets.

See Cataloging In Publication .

Also known as  caret, the character (^) entered in derived searches in WorldCat to signify lack of an element to make searches more precise.  For example, in the 4,3,1 derived search for the name Jay Weitz, enter weit,jay,^ where the circumflex signifies there is no third element (middle name or initial).

A logical system for the arrangement of knowledge. 

Often referred to as a class number, this is the part of a call number, usually a combination of letters and/or numbers, used to classify library resources by subject area using a particular classification system.

A list of classes arranged according to a set of pre-established principles for the purpose of organizing items in a collection, or entries in an index, bibliography, or catalog, into groups based on their similarities and differences, to facilitate access and retrieval (i.e., classification by subject). Classification systems can be enumerative or hierarchical, broad or close. Examples of classification systems include Dewey Decimal Classification and Library of Congress Classification.

(1) To arrange a collection of items according to a classification system. (2) To assign a classification number to an individual work.

Wizards in CONTENTdm that help simplify the process of entering descriptive and administrative metadata in both simple and compound records.

See Continuing Resources format .

A unique 6-character code assigned by the Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) to identify serial and non-serial publications in all subject areas.

See WorldShare Collection Manager .

See WorldCat Collection Sets .

See Computer Files format .

A type of Connexion search that allows you to type (1) any complete keyword, numeric, or derived search in a single string, including index labels, qualifiers, and Boolean operators, or (2) a browse string, including the Scan ( sca ) command and index label in the format  sca xx:.   See also Derived search .

Note: The equivalent search capability in FirstSearch, Resource Sharing, and Record Manager is called an "expert search." 

The communications format presents a MARC record in a form that looks like one long run-on sentence, in which the fields are not preceded by tags. Immediately following the leader is a block of data called a directory. This directory tells what tags are in the record and where they are placed by a count of the characters to the position where each field begins. The directory is constructed, by computer, from the bibliographic record, based on the cataloging information, and, if any of the cataloging information is altered, can be reconstructed in the same way. See also MARC (Machine-Readable Cataloging) .

When registering a shared print commitment for a published run of a serial, completeness of holdings may be evaluated and noted in a local holdings record 583 field, specifying what physical material is missing, e.g. missing foldouts, pages, issues, volumes etc. 

OCLC-MARC Bibliographic format used for cataloging computer software (including programs, games, fonts), numeric data, computer-oriented multimedia, online systems or services; the three-character format designator for computer files is “COM".

See Meeting name .

One of OCLC's integrated cataloging services, offering access to WorldCat, the OCLC Authority File, and other online databases. Connexion browser is a web-based interface, while Connexion client is a Windows-based software interface. Both provide the same basic cataloging capabilities, though there are also unique features provided by each. A full comparison chart [ https://www.oclc.org/go/en/oclc-cataloging-application-comparison.html ] is available to help users decide which service is most appropriate for their work.

Cooperative Serials Program (CONSER, which originally stood for CONversion of SERials) is the oldest program of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC). CONSER participants contribute records for serials and integrating resources to WorldCat, where the CONSER database resides. Records meet or exceed the CONSER Standard Record (CSR) requirements and have the code "pcc" in the 042 field. See also PCC .

A partial record that contains standardized content for reuse in creating or editing a record without having to retype each time the content is reused. Constant data records are created by and shared among librarians at a given institution for cataloging and resource sharing activities.

The tags, indicators, codes, and other conventions established explicitly by MARC 21 to identify and further characterize the data elements within a record and to support the manipulation of that data. MARC 21 attempts to preserve content designator consistency across formats where appropriate. See also Record structure .

OCLC's digital collection software suite. It allows you to digitize, store, search, and mount your digital objects on the Web.

OCLC-MARC format used for cataloging resources issued over time with no predetermined conclusion. The Continuing Resources format includes serials and ongoing integrating resources. In WorldCat searches, use the Continuing Resources index (label:  cnr ) as a qualifier to limit results to records for this type of material.

OCLC service that catalogs libraries' collections as their cataloging agent. Formerly called TechPro or Custom Cataloging.

A 00x field. Control fields are structurally different from variable data fields containing neither indicator positions nor subfield codes. They may contain either a single data element or a series of fixed-length data elements. Although field 007 does not have indicators or subfield codes, it displays in subfielded form in Connexion interfaces.

Using an existing bibliographic record (rather than creating an original record) with edits for local use.

In Resource Sharing, copyright compliance allows borrowing libraries to provide a statement of how they conform to either US Copyright code ( 17 U.S. Code § 108) or local copyright code in their countries.

The name of an agency, association, business, firm, government, institution, nonprofit enterprise, performing group, etc. used as an authorized access point in a bibliographic record.

See Derived search .

Course Reserves is a functionality available to libraries using WorldShare Management Services and/or WorldCat Discovery that allows patrons to search for courses and view reserved materials in a library collection. Users can search for courses by name, prefix, instructor, or department.

See  OCLC Customer Services Division .

Customized groups of libraries managed and maintained by individual libraries to help them organize the large OCLC Resource Sharing network into smaller groups of libraries that share common characteristics.  Custom Holdings groups can be used to identify lenders for particular types of borrowing requests or to apply a deflection policy in lending, or, for Tipasa libraries, to identify Lending Priorities Groups or Proven Senders.

A record that contains a list of OCLC symbols defined by an individual library either for use in identifying preferred lenders or for defining a group of libraries for deflecting lending requests in resource sharing.

A record that contains one or more custom holdings group records sorted in order of borrowing preference.

A notation derived from the main entry and added to the class number to order materials within classes. Cutter numbers can be derived from the Cutter Three-Figure Author Table, the Cutter-Sanborn Three-Figure Author Table, or the OCLC Four-Figure Cutter Tables.  The notation often, but not always, combines alphabetic characters representing an author’s surname with numerals.  The class and Cutter notations together form a call number intended to be unique within a particular collection of resources.

See Discovery to Delivery (D2D) .

An automated service that allows synchronization of local holdings with WorldCat to make collections visible and available through OCLC services. The service adds original records to WorldCat, enhances and matches local library records with existing WorldCat records, manages local holdings data, sets or deletes holdings, and updates local bibliographic data.

The specifications for an institution's OCLC Data Sync project. The Data Sync collection profile details the general properties about the project, information about the bibliographic records, outlines local bibliographic data for retention, specifies the MARC record output if necessary, and allows for contact information and correspondence.

An option for an institution to elect to receive a copy of the matching OCLC MARC bibliographic record when it sets its holding symbol in WorldCat through the OCLC Data Sync service. Alternatively, the institution may choose to receive their own record(s) back.

A capability that allows full and higher cataloging authorizations and cataloging roles to add such elements as subject headings, call numbers, and contents notes to WorldCat bibliographic records. Database enrichment is now part of Expert Community capabilities.

In FirstSearch detailed records, "Date of Entry" is the label for MARC field 008/00-05.

Also in FirstSearch, "Date of Entry" is the Advanced Search Index name (da) for OCLC-defined field 947 subfield $n and field 953 subfield $b in the ERIC database and field 953 subfield $b in the MEDLINE database.

See Digital Collection Gateway .

See Dewey Decimal Classification .

See   Duplicate Detection and Resolution (DDR) .

Two or more characters where a letter is entered first followed by one or more diacritical marks that display as one character. For example, the base letter e (U+0065) followed by the combining acute accent (U+0301) which displays as é . See also Diacritic  and  Precomposed diacritic .

A tool that enables organizations to let their patrons drive which items are purchased by working with a vendor to set up a collection of titles available for DDA, which will trigger a purchase when a patron accesses an item via the organization's Discovery. Also known as Evidence Based Acquisition (EBA) and Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA).

The holding library code is a four-character code associated with a specific OCLC symbol. It appears automatically in data fields when a user displays a bibliographic record (field 049 subfield $a) or local holdings record (field 852 subfield $b).

Deflection is a feature of such resource sharing systems as WorldShare Interlibrary Loan and Tipasa that allows the institution to say "no" to requests for items that cannot be loaned for policy and/or licensing reasons. The library is skipped in the lender string and the request moves on to the next lender. Deflection policies may be based on such factors as the request service type, local holdings, format type, OCLC profiled group membership, Custom Holding Group, maximum cost, E-license terms, and material age in years.

Action to remove an institution's OCLC symbol from a record in the database. This can be done one of two ways: Create a Delete WorldCat Holdings collection within Data Sync collections or create a Bibliographic collection with Record Status element set to "Use". Data Sync cancels the holding on the matching record when a match is found and the Record Status element (Leader byte 5) contains the character "d". This is equivalent to the Delete Holdings command in Connexion and the Delete command in Record Manager.

See Subfield delimiter .

For cataloging, the use of a related existing record to create a new WorldCat record.

A shortcut type of WorldCat search using a specific number of initial characters from the words in a name and/or title. The "derived" segments of the words are separated by commas. The number and pattern of characters and commas tells WorldCat which index to search: Title (3,2,2,1); Personal name (4,3,1); Corporate/Conference name (=4,3,1); Name/Title (4,4). See also Command line search .

See Holdings level .

A classification number that conforms to the conventions used in the Dewey Decimal Classification system. The classes used to identify library resources are: 000, General Works; 100, Philosophy & Psychology; 200, Religion; 300, Social Sciences; 400, Language; 500, Natural Sciences & Math; 600, Applied Sciences (Technology); 700, Fine Arts; 800, Literature; 900, Geography & History.

A general knowledge organization tool conceived by Melvil Dewey in 1873 and first published in 1876. At the broadest level, the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) is divided into ten main classes organized by disciplines or fields of study. Together these classes cover the entire world of knowledge. See also Dewey Decimal class number .

A Connexion browser session that provides access to WebDewey. Authorized users can start a Dewey Services Only session from the Connexion browser logon screen or from within an active Connexion browser cataloging session.

A mark that modifies the phonetic value of some other character or characters. It is always used in conjunction with another character.

In records coded as MARC-8, each diacritic occupies its own position, directly following the modified character, although the diacritic displays correctly in relation to its character.

In records coded as UTF-8, both precomposed and decomposed diacritics may be used.

See also Precomposed diacritics  and  Decomposed diacritics .

OCLC's CONTENTdm preservation archive service, which provides a managed storage environment for an institution's electronic content. The content is stored in the data format type and directory structure determined by the institution's local practice and collection policy, enabling the institution to get back the exact file that was submitted for archiving.

A Web-based tool that enables organizations to upload the metadata of their digital content to WorldCat. It is compatible with all OAI-compliant repositories, such as CONTENTdm. The Gateway provides institutions a self-service capability to synchronize their metadata with WorldCat to give digital collections increased visibility. Institutions use the Gateway to load metadata for their digital content to WorldCat, creating profiles for the metadata to be regularly harvested, uploaded, and converted to MARC format, assigning an OCLC number to support future synchronizations.

See Automated Request Manager .

Within each MARC record, a series of fixed length entries, with one entry for each variable field (control or data) present in a record. Each Directory entry contains three portions: the field tag, the field length, and the starting character position. The Directory immediately follows the Leader at the beginning of the record.

Discovery to Delivery (D2D) optimizes users’ ability to discover library resources within a consortium and to get immediate access to or request delivery of the material with little or no intervention from library staff. It also provides the tools staff need to request and track material that cannot be filled within the consortium.

In WorldCat Resource Sharing, a lender string may be suggested by the system based on volume and year data from the local holdings record.

For Connexion usage, see View holdings .

A library, agency, or commercial company that provides copies of documents on request, often for a fixed fee.

An international standard that supports creation of simple, informative descriptions of electronic resources that facilitate management and discovery. The Dublin Core standard defines 15 elements for a resource description. Users can define additional elements or qualifiers for the standard elements to adapt Dublin Core to meet their needs. The standard elements provide a shared semantic framework that allows communities operating under different rules or standards to exchange metadata.

Dublin Core has as its goals the following characteristics: simple creation and maintenance, commonly understood semantics, international scope, and extensibility.

For more information, visit the official DCMI site .

Software that identifies and merges duplicate bibliographic records in WorldCat. Using complex algorithms that examine data from multiple parts of each record, DDR compares some two dozen matching points to determine a similarity metric.  If the similarity is above a predetermined threshold, the records are deduplicated.  A hierarchy based on such factors as Encoding Level, codes in field 042, and the source of the cataloging selects the record to be retained.  Holdings are transferred from the deleted record to the retained record.  Under specified circumstances, some bibliographic data may transfer to the retained record.  The OCLC control number of each deleted record is added to field 019 in the retained record.  Most new and significantly edited bibliographic records are run through DDR soon after being added to or replaced in WorldCat. DDR may also target specific sets of records. See also Record matching .

A bibliographic record that represents the same manifestation of a resource as another bibliographic record in the same language of cataloging. The guidelines on "When to Input a New Record," Chapter 4 of OCLC's Bibliographic Formats and Standards , define what is and what is not considered to be a duplicate record in WorldCat. See also Allowable duplicate records .

East Asian Character Code. A set of unique 3-byte hexadecimal codes used to represent and store in machine-readable form all Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters used in the USMARC format.

A decommissioned OCLC method of data exchange via FTP. It was a method for libraries to send and receive files.

Document supplier that accepts WorldCat Resource Sharing requests and delivers full-text documents through messages to your library's Email system.

See Encoding Level .

Holdings information contained in an existing MARC 21 bibliographic record rather than being in a separate local holdings record.

• In bibliographic records, the Encoding Level represents the completeness of the record. It is identified in MARC 21 as Leader/17 and in Connexion as ELvl in the fixed fields, or in Record Manger as Encoding Level. Requirements for each encoding level in bibliographic records have varied over time. Correspondence between data in records and descriptive cataloging instructions is not exact.
• In authority records, the Encoding Level represents the completeness of the record. It is identified in MARC 21 as Leader/17 and in Connexion as Enc lvl in the fixed fields, or in Record Manager as Encoding Level.
• In holdings records, the Encoding Level represents the level of specificity of the holdings statement. It is identified in MARC 21 as Leader/17 and in Connexion and Record Manager as Encoding Level. Codes in holdings records reflect requirements of Holdings Statements for Bibliographic Items (ANSI/NISO Z39.71) and Holdings Statements-Summary Level (ISO 10324).

Enhance was a former OCLC program, established in 1983, that began the process of decentralizing responsibility for bibliographic quality control in WorldCat. Regular Enhance enabled specially authorized members of the cooperative to edit, upgrade, and replace full-level member input records in non-serial formats. National Level Enhance, instituted in 1994, enabled authorized Library of Congress catalogers and other participants in the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) to edit, upgrade, and replace full-level non-serial PCC records. Beginning in 2009, Regular Enhance was gradually superseded by the expanded editing and replacement capabilities of the OCLC Expert Community. National Level Enhance continues as the means by which PCC participants do BIBCO work in WorldCat. See also Expert Community .

A class of key conceptual objects of interest to users of information describing bibliographic data. In RDA entities include agent, collective agent, corporate body, expression, family, item, manifestation, nomen, person, place, timespan, and work.

A designation in numeric and/or alphabetic form, rather than in chronological form, presented for a serial issued in a sequence of numbering to show the relationship of the individual unit of the serial to the series as a whole. For example, Volume 235 and Volume XII are indicators of enumeration.

Historical term: A group of RLG databases. Most of the Eureka databases became part of OCLC FirstSearch.

See Demand Driven Acquisition (DDA) .

Beginning in 2009, the Expert Community is an expansion of the WorldCat record editing capabilities of the Enhance program to all full level cataloging users. OCLC's Expert Community provides Connexion users who have a full level authorization or higher more flexibility in making changes to WorldCat records. Maintenance of WorldCat is shared more equally between OCLC staff and member libraries. See also Enhance .

See Command line search .

(1) A command or action that causes a record to be converted to MARC 21, MARCXML, Dublin Core, or MODS format and output to a file on a workstation or in a local system. (2) Downloading a record from WorldCat.

Export one or more bibliographic or authority records directly to a local library system via a TCP/IP port. Establishing the export connection may require configuration of the local system and firewall.

RDA defines an expression as an intellectual or artistic realization of a work in the form of alpha-numeric, musical or choreographic notation, sound, image, object, movement, etc., or any combination of such forms. See also FRBR , WEMI , Work , Manifestation , and Item .

Middleware that authenticates library users against local authentication systems and provides remote access to licensed content based on the user's authorization.

See Surname .

Faceted Application of Subject Terminology is a faceted subject heading schema derived from the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). The facets are designed to be used in tandem, but each facet may also be used independently. The nine distinct facets are: Personal names, Corporate names, Meeting names, Geographic names, Events, Titles, Time periods, Topics, and Form/Genre.

In a bibliographic, authority, or holdings record, a tag in which the same kind of information is consistently entered. For example, bibliographic tag 245 is a field that consistently contains title information.

See Record structure .

In bibliographic records, determines how many initial characters the system omits before indexing the field.

A black box or vertical bar that represents content that must have valid data, or where no attempt is made to code the data.

Commands in the Action menu in Connexion client or in the Action list in Connexion browser, to accomplish specific tasks such as adding holdings to a record, exporting a record to a local system, adding a new WorldCat record, or replacing an existing WorldCat record. In Record Manager, these commands are located on the Record and Save dropdown menus.

Actions permitted on records are determined by the authorization used.

A final action (produce, update, save, or export) must be taken on an unresolved Data Sync record in order to resolve it. See also Resolved record and Unresolved record .

OCLC FirstSearch is an online reference service with a collection of databases, full-text articles, full-image articles, library holdings, and interlibrary loan. It supports research in a wide range of subject areas with well-known bibliographic and full-text databases in addition to ready-reference tools such as directories, almanacs, and encyclopedias.

A link between OCLC Direct Request and the OCLC FirstSearch service that allows patrons to generate requests for materials cited in FirstSearch databases.

The OCLC Fixed Field consists of elements of the MARC 21 Bibliographic Leader and field 008, in addition to control fields 001 and 005. The Fixed Field may be displayed as a single area with mnemonic labels for each element or as a separate variable field in Connexion client and WorldShare Record Manager. Fixed fields, and each element within a fixed field, have a fixed length. Each element is identified by its position. Other fields with fixed length elements are 006 and 007.

An element in a record whose length cannot be changed.

The loading of a file of bibliographic records to WorldCat without attempting to find matching records. OCLC does a forced add rarely, when materials in the file are so unusual that the existence of matching records in the database is unlikely.

See   Given name .

A standard for the representation and exchange of data in machine-readable form. There are five MARC 21 data communication formats: Authority, Bibliographic, Classification, Community Information, and Holdings. See also Bibliographic formats .

Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR), a 1998 publication from the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA).  Its intentions were “to provide a clearly defined, structured framework for relating the data that are recorded in bibliographic records to the needs of the users of those records,” and “to recommend a basic level of functionality for records created by national bibliographic agencies.”  In 2017, FRBR and its two sibling conceptual models, Functional Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD, 2009) and Functional Requirements for Subject Authority Data (FRSAD, 2010), were superseded by the IFLA Library Reference Model (LRM), developed within an entity-relationship modelling framework and designed for use in a linked data environment.

The grouping together of bibliographic records representing different but related editions of the same intellectual work, without regard to such attributes as format, language, date, and publisher, according to the model established by Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records. See also Expression , FRBR , Item , Manifestation , WEMI , and Work .

The interval at which a continuing resource is issued. Examples include weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually, and irregularly.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP)/Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) is a TCP/IP-based protocol that is generally available for file transfers to and from a large variety of hosts. FTP/SFTP is the method used to send and retrieve files.

The complete version of the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system.  See also   Abridged edition (DDC) .

A Full-level cataloging record seeks to ensure inclusion of the essential data elements necessary to meet user needs. It is a solid "floor" description of a resource that can be built upon in a shared environment. Full-level cataloging does not preclude the use of data in a bibliographic description representing more extensive cataloging treatment. Generally, full-level cataloging meets the requirements of RDA Core (RDA 1.3) or AACR2 second-level description (AACR2 1.0D2). Full-level cataloging uses ELvl codes I or blank .

The complete contents of a text-based resource, as opposed to an abstract or bibliographic record. See also Abstract .

See Electronic document supplier .

Keys and key combinations on the keyboard that transmit signals not associated with printable or displayable characters (examples: F1, F2, etc). In specific applications, such as OCLC Connexion, function keys are programmed to initiate commands. See also Keyboard shortcuts .

Historical term: Group Access Capability. A group of institutions that used the OCLC system for resource sharing and interlibrary lending. A GAC had full and selective members. A selective user had access only to abbreviated bibliographic records, and only to records for its own group. Groups were composed of at least one Full member and may have included Selective members who used WorldCat Resource Sharing only. GAC could also refer to the group itself. See Profiled groups .

Historical term: Group Access Capability/Union List. The same as a GAC, but a selective user also had access to local holdings records for its group. See Profiled groups .

Policy for retention of a single item or parts of a continuing resource held by a library. General retention policy is coded in field 008 byte 12 of a local holdings record (LHR).  Examples include: Permanently retained, Retained for a limited period, and Not retained.  See also Specific retention policy .

A name chosen for a person at birth that identifies and differentiates that person from others in the same family. Depending on the culture a person is born into, the given name can precede or follow a surname (i.e. family name). A given name may also be known as a forename, first name, or personal name. See also Surname .

Historical term: The OCLC GovDoc service, which was available to regional and selective depository libraries, provided up-to-date, MARC-format cataloging records for U.S. government documents.

Government-assigned number for materials provided at the expense of and by the authority of any office of the government, for example, United States Superintendent of Documents (SuDoc) numbers.

In Connexion, the default display of WorldCat search results when a search retrieves 101 to 1500 records, with 1500 being the system limit for retrieval. Results in a group list are sorted by type of material and year of publication. Clicking an entry opens either a brief or truncated list, depending on the number of records represented by the group list entry. See also Brief list and Truncated list .

OCLC service that helps libraries join to purchase, usually for a discount from the price each would pay to purchase the services on their own.

Edit or create a field by using system-supplied text boxes and lists to enter or change data.

Text boxes and lists of indexes and qualifiers to enter or select the parts of a search, for example for WorldCat, LC authority, or save file records. For entering searches without having to remember indexes, labels, correct order for searches, etc., as you do for command line searches.

Historical term: A database that included records for European printing of the hand-press period (circa 1455-1830) from the Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL), whose members represented national and university libraries in 16 countries, and was only available to CERL members.

The library or collection within an institution represented by the holding library code.

A unique 4-character code that identifies a holding library or collection within an institution.  For 3-character OCLC symbols, the holding library is often the OCLC symbol and another character. For example ADRR, when the OCLC symbol is ADR. See also OCLC symbol  and Library identifier .

The total stock of materials, print and nonprint, owned by a library or library system, usually listed in its catalog. Synonymous in this sense with library collection. In a narrower sense, all the copies, volumes, issues, or parts of an item owned by a library, especially a serial publication, indicated in a holdings statement in the record representing the item in the catalog. Holdings can be recorded in the MARC 21 Format for Holdings Information. See also Local holdings record (LHR) .

A list of OCLC symbols of institutions that hold the item. A holdings display accompanies each bibliographic record in WorldCat.

There are four levels of holdings specificity, ranging from a simple statement that the library holds the resource on up to a complex, detailed statement of exactly what parts of the resource are held. For the four levels, see the document  OCLC Z39.71 Local Holdings Maintenance (Table 1: Levels of Specificity) .

A record containing the location, status, and/or copies associated with a single bibliographic item of a specific publication held by a particular institution.

See OCLC holding library code .

See Access keys .

A term, number, or name used to refer to a library resource, library metadata description, or an entry within an ontology.

International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions IFLA is the leading international body representing the interests of library and information services and their users. As an independent, international, non-governmental, not-for-profit organization, IFLA aims to promote high standards of provision and delivery of library and information services, encourage widespread understanding of the value of good library and information services, and represent the interests of its members throughout the world. The Royal Library, the national library of the Netherlands, in The Hague, provides facilities for IFLA's headquarters.

See ILL Fee Management service (IFM) .

Institution Holdings Bit (IHB) is represented in online displays by the OCLC symbol.

Interlibrary loan. When a library resource is unavailable in or not owned by the library, a patron may request that it be borrowed from another library.  See also ILLiad , Resource sharing , Tipasa  and WorldShare Interlibrary Loan . 

A service that provides a means to reconcile  payments and charges for interlibrary loan transactions through a library's monthly OCLC invoice, eliminating individual billing.

Monthly data about Borrower and Lender activity furnished electronically at no charge. This report records the ISO-specific reason a Lender was unable to lend a requested item.

ILLiad, developed by Atlas Systems, is resource sharing management software that manages an institution’s borrowing, lending, and document delivery through a single Windows-based interface. See also ILL , Resource sharing , Tipasa  and WorldShare Interlibrary Loan .

Integrated Local System.  See Local system .

A command or action that causes bibliographic or authority records to be imported from a local system or offline service into the online or local save file to (1) add to WorldCat or (2) further process records received from an offline service such as WorldCat Cataloging Partners collections. The Import Records command is on the File menu in Connexion client.

A detailed alphabetical or numerical list for a specific kind of bibliographic and authority data provided by the system for retrieving a record or sets of records from a database such as WorldCat. See the document Searching WorldCat Indexes for specifics on searching bibliographic data and Indexes and indexed fields for specifics on searching authority data.

A two- or three-character code followed by a colon or equal sign that indicates to the system the index against which to match a search term in WorldCat.

Either of the first two character positions in the variable data fields that contain values which interpret or supplement the data found in the field. Indicator values are usually interpreted independently and supply information about the field for indexing and other system functions.

Words such as a, an, the, and the non-English equivalents that are the first word in a title or corporate name. See also Nonfiling indicator .

An operating system component or program enabling users to enter East Asian language characters with a keyboard. If you install CJK languages on your workstation, Windows automatically supplies the appropriate IMEs.

Data appended to a call number, representing the location, copy number, or other local information for an item. Input stamps are entered within brackets in the 049 field in MARC bibliographic records.

A library, a library system, an organization, or a part of a library, library system, or organization.

A term synonymous with Cataloging Profile. See also OCLC cataloging profile .

Historical term: A bibliographic record attached to a WorldCat record that contained additional cataloging data specific to the library that contributed the IR.  Institution records were the result of incorporating "cluster" records from the RLG Union Catalog into WorldCat during the integration of Research Libraries Group (RLG) into OCLC. IRs were deleted in 2016 in favor of LBDs.  See OCLC Local Bibliographic Data (LBD) .

See OCLC symbol .

See   Integrating resource .

See Local system .

A continuing resource that is added to or changed by means of updates that do not remain discrete but are integrated into the whole. Includes loose-leaf manuals that are updated by means of replacement pages, continuously updated websites, continuously updated databases, etc. The three-character format designator for integrating resources is "INT".  See also Continuing Resources format , Monograph , and Serial .

See Institution Record (IR) .

An International Standard Book Number is a unique number assigned to a resource by its publisher. Each ISBN is a 10- or 13-digit number and has four parts: the language group of the country of publication, the publisher, the title, and the check character.

International Organization for Standardization . A name derived from the Greek word isos, meaning "equal." Founded in London in 1947 with headquarters in Geneva, ISO is a nongovernmental federation of national standardization organizations in 130 countries, dedicated to establishing international standards to facilitate commerce and cooperation in scientific, technical, and economic endeavors. The United States is represented in ISO by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).  See also   ANSI .

An International Standard Serial Number consists of eight digits in two groups of four, separated by a hyphen. ISSNs are assigned through the ISSN Network and are used to identify newspapers, journals, magazines, and periodicals of all kinds and on all media.

A successive part of a serial that can be uniquely identified by words, numbers, or date of publication.

RDA defines an item as a single exemplar or instance of a manifestation. See also Expression , FRBR , Manifestation , WEMI , and Work .

A periodical publication usually devoted to scholarly subjects.

Combinations of keystrokes that perform set actions rather than using the mouse. Also called key bindings. Most actions in Connexion either have default key bindings or can be assigned to one. See also Function keys .

A file of keystroke shortcut assignments in Connexion client. Default key assignments are provided when you first install the client. You can customize keystrokes. Keymaps command on the Tools menu used to open windows for assigning, deleting, and working with keystroke assignments.

Default WorldCat search index (the system searches this index if a search has no specified index). Indexes a single word in a record, but other keyword search terms or qualifiers can be combined.

A type of search using one or more complete words indexed in a database. The OCLC index label is "kw:".

A set of textual and/or nontextual materials in which no one material dominates and which has a collective title. For example, a workbook that comes with flashcards, worksheets, video recording, game board, playing pieces, and dice.

Used on the spine of a book, on the pocket of a library item, or on a card representing a library item.

The types of information to be included on labels, including location, sublocation, call number, and enumeration.

A file created by catalogers that will create, edit, preview, and print labels for library resources. Connexion browser uses the OCLC Label Program. Connexion Client has a built-in label program. Record Manager provides a My Labels service.

Language of the cataloging agency used in those portions of the record that, according to cataloging instructions, are supplied by the cataloger. Language of Cataloging is also an index used to qualify WorldCat searches. Not the same as Language of resource.

Language of the text of the resource. Language is also an index used to qualify WorldCat searches. Not the same as Language of cataloging.

See OCLC Local Bibliographic Data (LBD) .

See Library of Congress .

Identification number derived from the U.S. Library of Congress classification system. Used to collocate and retrieve library resources.

A Library of Congress Control Number (previously called a Library of Congress Card Number) is a unique number assigned to a bibliographic or authority record by the Library of Congress. Before January 2001, LCCNs consisted of a three-character prefix (often containing blanks), a two-digit year, a six-digit serial number, and a trailing blank. This number was often displayed with a hyphen separating the year and the serial number. After December 2000, LCCNs consist of a two-character prefix (often containing blanks), a four-digit year, and a six-digit serial number.

Library of Congress Rule Interpretations are cataloging guidelines issued by the Library of Congress that provide for a common practice, sometimes called "national" practice, in applying Anglo-American Cataloging Rules (AACR).  This was the practice followed by the Library of Congress and all other libraries engaged in the bibliographic enterprise. These have been superseded by LC-PCC Policy Statements (LC-PCC PS), which are issued in conjunction with Resource Description & Access (RDA) guidelines.

See Library of Congress Subject Headings .

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol is an application protocol for querying and modifying directory services running over TCP/IP.

LDR may refer to either:

• Leader ( see Leader ) or
• OCLC Local Data Record ( see   Local holdings record (LHR) )

Data elements that provide information for the processing of the record. The data elements contain numbers or coded values and are identified by relative character position. The leader is fixed in length at 24 character positions and is the first field of a bibliographic, authority, and holdings record.

An institution supplying the requested item through interlibrary loan to another institution.

Information about potential Lenders available from Directory of OCLC Members and the OCLC Policies Directory.

OCLC symbols of up to 15 potential lenders for interlibrary loan requests.

See Minimal-level records .

The OCLC input standard establishing criteria for a full or complete bibliographic record, indicated in a MARC record as ELvl:I. Level I is the equivalent of MARC 21 encoding level blank.

The OCLC input standard establishing criteria for a minimal level bibliographic record, indicated in a MARC record as ELvl:K. Level K is the equivalent of MARC 21 encoding level 7.

See   OCLC Local Holdings Record Summary (LHRS) .

A locally assigned code that represents a particular institution. The code appears in a local data field of a bibliographic record submitted for Data Sync group processing. A translation table converts the library identifier to an OCLC symbol for a matched record. The OCLC symbol is set on matching records for "set holds" and removed from matched records on "cancels." See also OCLC symbol .

The Library of Congress (LC) is located in Washington, D.C. and is the main research arm of the United States Congress.  It is the home of the United States Copyright Office and serves as the nation's copyright depository. Although not officially a national library, it provides services appropriate to a national library.

See   LC call number .

An established list of preferred subject terms, curated by the Library of Congress, from which an indexer or cataloger may select when assigning subject headings to a bibliographic record representing a work he/she is cataloging. Includes main terms and subdivisions.

Data in a record that is pertinent only to the institution cataloging the record. For example, local processing information and cataloger's notes are local data. Certain 9xx fields are reserved for local data. Local data is not preserved in the WorldCat bibliographic record.

See OCLC Local Data Record .

In Connexion client, the file that resides on your hard drive or a network drive at your library, not on the OCLC system. Local files are used to save bibliographic or authority records or to store bibliographic or authority constant data as you work in Connexion client. The client provides four empty default files for these purposes when you first install. You can create as many local files as you need.

A cataloging authorization level that allows an Agent to create and maintain local holdings on a member's behalf. Also known as Cataloging Agent role.

Metadata structure used to represent or share information about a library’s collection. The MARC 21 Format for Holdings Data is an example of a local holdings format. See also MARC 21 Format for Holdings Data and OCLC Local Data Record .

OCLC service that allows libraries to maintain accurate, current holdings information by providing a library's holdings for materials in any format, including serials. The service supports resource sharing, collection development, circulation and acquisitions activities.

Separate holdings record attached to a related WorldCat bibliographic record that provides holdings details for a particular library. These details include: copy-specific information for an item, information peculiar to the holding library, information needed for local processing, maintenance, or preservation of an item, and version information. See also Holdings .

An institution's computer system that manages cataloging, acquisitions, circulation, serials and/or an online catalog. If elements of a local system are designed to interact, it can be called an Integrated Local System (ILS).

A company that provides a library's integrated library system.

An institution, a library within an institution, a library within a group of libraries, or a collection within an institution or library where a resource is stored or held.

See Holdings display .

See MARC (Machine-Readable Cataloging) .

A tool in Connexion client (Tools/Macros/Manage) that creates a macro by recording procedures as they are done, whether by mouse, keystroke, or a combination. The recorder creates the macro automatically in OCLC Macro Language (OML). The recorder is convenient for those who prefer not to write their own macros or lack BASIC programming skills.

Short programs that automate routine tasks in Connexion client one step at a time, using OCLC Macro Language (OML). Creating macros requires some understanding of BASIC programming language.

A strip of flexible material coated or impregnated with magnetizable particles, upon which sound, images, and/or data can be written and stored. Magnetic tape is commonly found in reel-to-reel, cartridge, or cassette form. In the context of bibliographic, authority, and/or holdings data, magnetic tape was the usual file exchange medium before such exchanges could occur via the internet.

Under AACR2, the main entry is the primary access point for a resource.  Most commonly, it is the person or corporate body with the chief intellectual responsibility for the resource.  In other cases, the main entry is the title.

In the card catalog environment, the main entry was the card providing the most complete description of a bibliographic resource and listing all of the subject and secondary access points.

See WorldCat Collection sets .

RDA defines a manifestation as a physical embodiment of an expression of a work.  See also FRBR , Expression , Item , WEMI , and Work .

Items written by hand or unpublished single instance items. Examples are a handwritten or typewritten letter, a handwritten score, a hand-drawn map, etc. The handwritten or single instance characteristic distinguishes an item as a manuscript as compared to mass-produced multiple-copy publications and online resources.

See Maps format .

OCLC-MARC Bibliographic format used to catalog cartographic material including maps, atlases, globes, digital maps, and other cartographic resources. The three-character format designator for cartographic material is "MAP".

Approved character sets for MARC 21 cataloging as defined in  MARC 21 Specifications for Record Structure, Character Sets, and Exchange Media . Subsets of Unicode.  See also   Non-Latin scripts and Unicode .

The  MARC 21 Format for Authority Data  defines the codes and conventions (tags, indicators, subfield codes, and coded values) that identify the data elements in MARC 21 authority records.  It is a carrier for information concerning the authorized forms of names, titles, subjects, and subject subdivisions to be used in constructing access points, references to the authorized forms, and the interrelationships among these forms.

The  MARC 21 Format for Bibliographic Data  defines the codes and conventions (tags, indicators, subfield codes, and coded values) that identify the data elements in MARC 21 bibliographic records.  It is a carrier for bibliographic information about printed, online, and manuscript textual materials, computer files, maps, music, continuing resources, visual materials, and mixed materials. Bibliographic data commonly includes titles, names, subjects, notes, publication data, and information about the physical description of a resource. See also OCLC-MARC .

MARC 21 Format for Holdings Data  defines the codes and conventions (tags, indicators, subfield codes, and coded values) that identify the data elements in MARC holdings reports for serial and nonserial resources. It is a carrier for holdings information for three types of bibliographic resources that are identified by a code in Leader/06 (Type of record). Holdings data commonly includes copy-specific information for an item, information that is peculiar to the holding organization, information that is needed for local processing, maintenance, or preservation of the item, and version information. See also Local Holdings Format and OCLC Local Data Record .

MARC (MAchine-Readable Cataloging) is a family of international standards for the representation and communication of bibliographic, authority, holdings, classification, and related information in machine-readable form, based upon the Format for Information Exchange, ISO 2709.  MARC standards define the three elements of record structure, content designation, and data content.  MARC 21, originally developed by the Library of Congress in the 1960s, is the most widely used of the MARC standards.  UNIMARC (Universal MARC Format), developed by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) in the 1970s, is the second most widely used MARC standard. See also Communications format .

Short alphabetic codes, assigned by national agencies, representing names of libraries and other organizations that need to be identified in the bibliographic environment. They are structured and use mnemonics to help identify the institutions represented. The codes consist of as many as four subunits, usually representing geographical jurisdictions and/or the organization itself.

A MARC record is a representation of bibliographic, authority, holdings, classification, or related data in machine-readable form that is formatted according to the appropriate MAchine-Readable Cataloging (MARC) standard and may be used for data exchange.  A single record collects data elements that describe or identify one or more units treated as one logical entity.  The record consists of a leader, a directory, and variable fields.  Variable fields are identified by a three-digit numeric tag and may include up to two numeric indicators supplying additional information about the field.  Variable fields may be further divided into subfields identified by a single-character alphabetic or numeric code.

See WorldCat record .

The type of material the record represents. The type can represent a physical type, such as atlas or kit ; or content, such as biography or fiction ; or focus, such as juvenile or conference publication .

See Workform .

Wholesale booksellers and publishers who provide library materials through approval plans and firm orders from institutions.

Bibliographic records must meet size limits defined in MARC21 standards to be exported as MARC21. The number of characters a field cannot exceed is 9,999. The number of characters a record cannot exceed is 99,999. These limits apply to records exported as MARC21 using Connexion and WorldShare Record Manager. If records exceed these limits and need to be exported, the MARCXML export format must be used. The number of characters an authority record cannot exceed is 9,000.

The Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) thesaurus is a controlled and hierarchically-organized vocabulary used to describe the subject of a medical work. MeSH is provided by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) for medical and health sciences libraries, and includes the subject headings appearing in MEDLINE/PubMed, the NLM Catalog, and other NLM databases.

The name of a meeting, conference, exhibition, exposition, festival, athletic contest, scientific expedition, etc. used as an authorized access point in a bibliographic record.

See Medical Subject Headings .

Literally, data about data. It is descriptive information about a particular data set, object, or resource, including how it is formatted, and when and by whom it was collected. Originally metadata most commonly referred to digital resources, but now can refer to any physical or electronic resource. It may be created automatically using software or entered by hand.

Minimal-level records contain the essential data necessary to identify a resource. Generally, the records meet the requirements of AACR2 first-level description, rule 1.0D1. Minimal-level does not prohibit the addition of data deemed necessary.

See Mixed Materials format .

OCLC-MARC Bibliographic format used for cataloging resources in two or more forms that are usually related by virtue of their having been accumulated by or about a person or body. Includes archival and manuscript collections of mixed forms of materials, such as text, photographs, and sound recordings. It generally excludes resources whose primary purpose is instructional. The three-character format designation for mixed materials is MIX. The mixed materials format was previously referred to as Archival and Manuscript Materials.

An aid used to help memory. Fixed field elements of records have mnemonic identifiers to help catalogers with coding and interpretation.

An abbreviated identifier for an OCLC-MARC fixed field element, constructed from the full element name that it represents.  The mnemonics are a display option in some WorldCat interfaces.  For example, the mnemonics "ELvl" or "Enc Lvl" have stood for "Encoding Level."

A resource complete in one part or intended to be complete in a finite number of parts. See also Serial .

Surname that includes prefixes, hyphenated names, or names that begin with articles or prepositions.

A formatted numbering designation assigned by a publisher to a music resource manifestation; these include plate numbers and publisher numbers for notated music and issue or serial numbers and matrix numbers for audio recordings. The phrase “Music Publisher Number” dates back to before field 028 was expanded for use beyond music and was still known as “Publisher Number for Music."  See also Publisher number .

In Connexion client, a customized free-text note or identifier of up to 40 characters, which may be entered (Action/Set Status) or set as a default (Tools/Options/My Status), and appears in the status bar of a displayed record. My Status may be assigned to help identify, retrieve, and manage online and local bibliographic save file records and constant data and local authority save file records and constant data. It is not available for online authority save file records and constant data.

Name Authority Cooperative Program (NACO), part of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC). Participants in NACO create and maintain authority records in the LC/NACO Name Authority File. See also PCC .

See OCLC Policies Directory .

See Enhance .

See NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol (NCIP) .

Sequence of characters identifying the user to the responding interlibrary loan application and used as input for User authentication. Also known as User ID, account name, or login name.

National Information Standards Organization. Accredited by ANSI (American National Standards Institute) to develop voluntary technical standards for the library, information sciences, and publishing communities.

NISO standard defining messaging between circulation systems, Ill systems or broker applications. This protocol is limited to the exchange of messages between and among computer-based applications enabling them to:

• perform functions necessary to lend and borrow items
• provide controlled access to electronic resources
• facilitate co-operative management of these functions

See ANSI/NISO Standards for Holdings Data .

Sets of characters and symbols used to express written languages not based on the Latin alphabet.  WorldCat supports the use of all Unicode defined characters.  Non-Latin scripts include but are not limited to Arabic, Armenian, Bengali, Chinese, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Ethiopic, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Syriac, Tamil, and Thai.  See also   MARC-8 character sets and Unicode .

See System days .

In bibliographic and authority records, indicators determine the number of character positions associated with a definite or indefinite article (e.g., An, Le, or The) at the beginning of a title that are disregarded in sorting, indexing, and filing processes. Any diacritical mark, space, mark of punctuation associated with the article, and any space or mark of punctuation preceding the first filing character is included in the count of nonfiling characters.  See also Initial article .

In local holdings records, an indication that an apparent discontinuity in the enumeration or chronology of a continuing resource represents unpublished parts of the resource itself, not missing items. For example, a temporary cessation of publication or a change in numbering may result in a nongap break.

Institution that does not accept interlibrary loan requests through OCLC. In WorldCat holdings displays, the OCLC symbols of nonsuppliers display in lowercase letters.

Statement in the note area of the bibliographic record giving information not included elsewhere in the bibliographic description. See also Note area .

The area following the physical description in a bibliographic record giving the contents of the work, its relationship to other works, and any physical characteristics not included in preceding areas of bibliographic description. Each note is given in a separate 500-590 field(s) in a MARC record. See also Note .

A WorldCat search for such numeric values as the OCLC Control Number; a standard number or code that may be entirely numeric, such as a Universal Product Code (UPC); or a standard number or code that may include numeric characters, alphabetic characters, and/or punctuation, such as LC Class Numbers or CODEN Designations.

A freely-accessible search engine for open access web resources. It was built through harvesting from open access collections worldwide using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). As of June 2021, OAIster includes more than 50 million records that represent digital resources from more than 2,000 contributors.

A nonprofit global library cooperative providing shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large. Originally "Ohio College Library Center," later "Online Computer Library Center, Inc." or "OCLC, Inc.".

A database that documents the authoritative forms of names (personal, corporate, and family), titles, subject headings, and/or genre/form headings to be used in a catalog from the various authority files to which OCLC provides access, including, but not limited to, LC/NACO, Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), Dutch (NTA), Māori, and German (GND).

Historical term: A 3" by 5" printed card containing bibliographic information. OCLC discontinued card production in 2015.

OCLC's online services for cataloging library materials using WorldCat and for producing machine-readable records and other offline products. Participating institutions retrieve bibliographic records, modify the information for local use, and then set holdings. Institutions also contribute new records and location information to WorldCat for items for which no record is found. Access to cataloging activities is provided by WorldShare Record Manager or Connexion (client or browser) as well as CatExpress and Z39.50 cataloging.

Identifies and describes an institution's collections, including department and branch collections. Describes classification schemes and sources of subject headings. Required for using OCLC services.

OCLC control number (OCN) is a unique accession number assigned by the OCLC system when a bibliographic record is added to WorldCat. Used to search for records.

OCLC's user assistance and support contact desk that provides support for telecommunications, hardware, and software.

Bibliographic records originally obtained from OCLC. Some institutions export records directly from OCLC into their local system, without setting holdings online. These records are then returned to OCLC as a Data Sync collection to set and/or cancel the institution's holdings.

An authorized agent for OCLC products and services for the international market.  See also OCLC regional service provider .

A four-character code that uniquely identifies a holding library within an institution that may be based on the institution's OCLC symbol. See also OCLC symbol .

Bibliographic information that is unique to the holding library such as local subject headings, uniform titles, or notes.

Describes the holdings of a specific library. Local data records may include a summary of a library’s holdings, details about the specific items in the collection, and bibliographic information that is unique for the holding library. See also Local holdings format and MARC21 Format for holdings data .

A concise description of all of a library’s local holdings for a specified title. Holdings summaries are most often used to provide a brief summary of a library’s serial or multipart holdings that are shelved at multiple locations.

OCLC's implementation of the MARC format.  See also   MARC 21 Format for Bibliographic Data .

See OCLC control number .

See WorldCat (the OCLC Online Union Catalog) .

Online repository of lending and copying policies of libraries participating in WorldShare Interlibrary Loan and Tipasa. It provides a way to search resource sharing libraries by OCLC institution symbol or name and group symbol or name. It also enables institutions to enter their own information (e.g., schedule, contacts, collections, web links), informational copy and lending policies, and deflection policies that allow requests to bypass an institution. The OCLC Policies Directory replaced the Name-Address Directory as a repository for this type of information.

Historical term: Centers organized by region or library type in the United States. Regional networks served their libraries and library networks and provided access and support to OCLC members and participating library organizations that contracted for OCLC services.  See also   OCLC distributor .

A unique, alpha-numeric 3- or 5-character identifier issued by OCLC to member institutions and participants. For example OCLC symbols are used in field 040 (Cataloging Source) in bibliographic records. See also Holding library code  and Library identifier .

Historical term: Former name for local holdings maintenance service.  See also   Local holdings maintenance .

Access reports on your library's use of OCLC services, including online cataloging. Available at www.stats.oclc.org .

See WorldShare Interlibrary Loan .

Connexion client cataloging capabilities using local files without logging on to the OCLC system, including creating and editing records and constant data, taking immediate actions on single records or records selected from a list, and copying or moving records from one save file to another. Offline, one may also complete such local processing as exporting and printing records, printing labels, marking records with actions for batch processing, and entering batch search keys.

Various methods of reporting errors for bibliographic and authority records are available, depending upon the system used. For information on the methods of reporting errors, please see the document Bibliographic Formats and Standards (BFAS) 5.5, Requesting changes to records .

Historical term: An online service that library administrative staff could use to order OCLC products and services, as well as view, update, or manage their OCLC account information. In 2021, ordering and invoicing were replaced by an internal system, while customer service was superseded by OCLC's Zendesk User Portal.

Online Public Access Catalog, a database composed of bibliographic records describing a library or library system's collection. Most online catalogs are searchable by author, title, subject, and keywords and allow users to print, download, or export records.

A holdings statement that indicates an item (such as a serial, a series, or a multipart work) is still in publication.

Cataloging performed by an institution itself and not derived from any other source.

Bibliographic records in WorldCat that describe the same resource, but which have different languages of cataloging. Cataloger-supplied descriptive cataloging fields, such as physical description and non-quoted notes, correspond to the language of cataloging (040 subfield $b).  See also   Allowable duplicate records and the document BFAS 2.6 Language of Cataloging .

The Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) consists of four programs (BIBCO, CONSER, NACO, and SACO). Libraries join this voluntary organization by becoming active in one or more of the programs. The Library of Congress houses the Secretariat of the PCC and is a PCC member.  See also BIBCO ,  CONSER ,  NACO  and  SACO .

A magazine, journal, or other serial publication issued at regular, recurring intervals. Differs from a newspaper in format and publication frequency (annually, quarterly, monthly, weekly rather than daily).

Used to search for an entire field or subfield in a record, consisting of words, numbers, or character strings. To enter a complete search string (using a "command line" search in Connexion or an "expert" search in FirstSearch, Resource Sharing, or Record Manager) use a phrase index label in the format xx= . See the document Searching WorldCat Indexes .

Describes the physical characteristics of a library resource usually within a MARC 300 field in a bibliographic record. For books this includes such data as dimensions, number of pages, illustrations, and accompanying materials.

An acronym of P roject of I ntegrated C ataloging A utomation, PICA was originally a library cooperative in the Netherlands, serving that country as well as portions of Belgium, France, and Germany. PICA was founded with a half million seed records from OCLC's catalog in 1979. In 1999, OCLC acquired a 35% portion of PICA, increasing that share to 60% in 2000. In July 2007, OCLC acquired the remaining 40% share from the Pica Foundation.

PICA+ (or PICA plus) is the name of the internal database format based on MARC within CBS systems.

In Connexion client, a method for keeping multiple records or workforms of the same type or from the same database open simultaneously.

Any number of reports generated as a result of Data Sync processing.

A single Unicode character that is a combined letter and diacritical mark(s) which also display as one character.

For example, the Latin small letter e with acute accent, é (U+00E9).

See also   Diacritic  and  Decomposed diacritics .

A title forming the authorized access point that identifies a resource, especially if it has appeared under varying titles. Preferred titles generally serve one of two purposes: collocating versions of the resource including complete works, works in a particular literary or musical form (sonatas, songs) and distinguishing between different resources with the same or similar titles. Uniform title is the term used by AACR2, and Preferred title is the term used by RDA.

An OCLC-defined arrangement whereby a single cataloging agent creates records or sets holdings in WorldCat under a single OCLC symbol for multiple institutions. Holding library codes identify the separate institutions. Only the OCLC symbol for the processing center appears in the holdings display of records.  See also   Cataloging Agent mode .

See Post-processing report .

A structured definition of the content and format by a participating institution for many OCLC products. During the initial profiling process, OCLC assigns an OCLC symbol to an institution.

Profiled Groups are set up by OCLC and used in resource sharing. Membership is based on a shared consortial or regional relationship or a set of shared policies (e.g., libraries with long lending periods, libraries who do not charge, libraries who can supply copies of e-books). These groups and their memberships are displayed in OCLC’s ILL Policies Directory. These groups can be used to build lender strings in borrowing for resource sharing or in deflection policies for resource sharing lending.

See WorldCat Cataloging Partners .

An agent responsible for publishing, releasing, or issuing a manifestation.

Plate and publishers' numbers for printed music (scores); serial and matrix numbers for sound recordings; videorecording numbers for visual materials, and publisher numbers other than those for sound recordings, music, or videorecordings. The publisher number is recorded in MARC field 028, subfield $a and is used for matching in Data Sync. For example, B 07042 L.  See also Music Publisher number .

A means by which a database search, for instance in WorldCat or FirstSearch, may be made more precise when used in combination with numeric, keyword, or other search terms. Among the common search qualifiers are:  material type, years of publication, microform or not microform, cooperative programs, internet or not internet, language, and holding library.  See also Holding library , Index label , and Material type . For more information see the document Searching WorldCat Indexes .

See   Resource Description & Access (RDA) . 

See Sound Recordings format .

A standardized set of related data fields retrievable as a single entity containing bibliographic, authority, or holdings information.

Within the context of OCLC Data Sync processing, a record must contain enough bibliographic data to represent a library resource.

See also Authority record , Bibliographic record , and Holdings record .

Defines a range of tasks that can be performed when logged on to a service within Record Manager. For complete list, see the document Bibliographic Formats and Standards 5.2.1 . See also Authorization level .

Within the context of WorldCat, the automated processes by which potential candidate bibliographic records are retrieved, data in the records are compared, and a best match is chosen. The methods of candidate selection, data comparison, and choice of best record vary depending upon the functions and workflows involved.  See also Duplicate Detection and Resolution (DDR) and Unique-key matching .

In Connexion, information stored in the working copy of a bibliographic or authority record saved in the online or local save file, usually displayed in the record's status bar and in a save file list. Statuses include actions taken and their outcomes, the origin of a record, its position in a workflow, its lock status, any customized status, etc. See also Status bar .

In MARC 21 formats, record structure is the order in which the content designators and content appear in the record and/or file. Record structure can include technical specifications used in the record and in files. The terms record format and record structure are often used interchangeably. See also Content designation .

See Type of Record (Type) .

See WorldCat registry .

A unique identifier for a publication of basic or applied research, often of a technical or scientific nature, intended to disseminate information and recommend action. In MARC bibliographic records, nonstandardized report numbers are found in field 088, whereas standardized identifiers such as the International Standard Report Number (ISRN) and the Standard Technical Report Number (STRN) are found in field 027.

See Research Libraries Group (RLG) .

A record that has been successfully processed through Data Sync either by matching to an existing record or adding the record as a new record in WorldCat and setting or removing the holding in addition to other possible actions. See also Final OCLC actions and Unresolved record .

An international standard for creating library and cultural heritage resource metadata that are well-formed according to international models for user-focused linked data applications. RDA was created by the RDA Steering Committee (RSC) to replace the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd Edition Revised (AACR2), which were first published in 1978. RDA continues to be developed in a collaborative process led by the RSC in line with a set of objectives and principles informed by the  Statement of International Cataloguing Principles .

Activities resulting from formal or informal agreements among libraries to share collections and possibly other resources for the benefit of users. This includes the borrowing and lending of materials through interlibrary loan, facilitating the creation, sending, management, and tracking of loan requests and document orders, which may help to reduce the costs of collection development. See also ILLiad , Tipasa , and WorldShare Interlibrary Loan .

The period of time that an institution commits to retaining a specific item as part of a Shared Print program. It is recorded in the 583 field of the Local Holdings Record (LHR).

See also General retention policy and Specific retention policy .

"Review file" itself is a historical term, although the concept remains.  Patron-generated ILL requests are currently found in the "New for Review" queue in WorldShare Interlibrary Loan and Tipasa and in the "Awaiting Request Processing" queue for ILLiad.

Founded in 1974 by Columbia University, Harvard University, Yale University, and the New York Public Library, RLG grew into a not-for-profit organization of more than 160 members.  Its Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN) database eventually contained some 88 million bibliographic records. In 2006, an RLG membership vote approved the combination of RLG and OCLC into a single organization. The RLIN database was integrated into WorldCat and many RLG programs and initiatives migrated to OCLC's RLG Programs, which itself evolved into the OCLC Research Library Partnership by 2011. Several OCLC products and services, including the SCIPIO database of art sales catalogs and the archival collection discovery tool ArchiveGrid, had their origins at RLG. See also ArchiveGrid and SCIPIO record .

Latin script representation of non-Latin script data in records.

Subject Authority Cooperative program (SACO), one of the programs of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC). Participants in SACO submit proposals for Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), for Library of Congress Classification (LCC), and for other LC vocabularies. The other vocabularies are LC Genre/Form Terms (LCGFT), LC Demographic Group Terms (LCDGT), and LC Medium of Performance Thesaurus for Music (LCMPT). See also PCC .

Standard Address Number. A unique seven-digit identifier used to signify a specific address of an organization in (or served by) the publishing industry. Initiated by R. R. Bowker, the SAN is an American National Standard.

In Connexion and Record Manager, a temporary online storage area for bibliographic or authority records that catalogers are in the process of creating, editing, reviewing, etc. Each library has a single online save file per logon authorization that is accessible to catalogers from that library only.

In the Connexion client only, catalogers can also use local save files while logged on or offline ("local" means that they are stored on a workstation or shared drive).

Online and local save files can store up to 9,999 records.

The number the system uses to track records in your library's cataloging Save file.

Command used to send a browse string to the system to scan indexes.  See also Browse .

Listings of subjects and their subdivisions arranged in a systematic order with notation given for each subject and its subdivisions, such as the series of DDC numbers 000–999, their headings, and notes.

SCIPIO (Sales Catalog Index Project Input Online) records cover art auction and rare book catalogs for sales from the late sixteenth century through the present. SCIPIO records were incorporated into WorldCat during the integration of Research Libraries Group (RLG) into OCLC. See also Research Libraries Group (RLG) .

See Scores format .

OCLC-MARC Bibliographic format used for cataloging notated music, which may consist of graphical, symbolic, or word-based musical notation in manuscript, printed, microform, or electronic form; the three-character format designator for scores is “SCO”.

In a Connexion Search WorldCat screen or window, search term input boxes have a popup or dropdown list that displays recent previous searches.

Record Manager displays recent previous searches as tabs on the left side of the screen.

See Batch search key .

See Serial .

A continuing resource issued in a succession of discrete parts, usually bearing numbering or chronological designations, that is intended to continue indefinitely. Includes annuals, journals, newspapers, numbered monographic series, periodicals, proceedings, etc. The three-character format designator for serial is "SER". See also  Continuing Resources format , Integrating resource , and Monograph .

A group of separate resources related to one another by the fact that each resource bears, in addition to its own title proper, a collective title applying to the whole. The individual resources may or may not be numbered. Series may include monographic series, another type of serial, multipart monographs, and integrating resources.

A series title represents the name of a group of separate resources related to each other by subject matter, issued successively, and generally by the same publisher in a uniform style, with each resource having, in addition to its individual title, a collective series title.

Time between logon and logoff when an OCLC library is logged on to the OCLC system to use a product or service.

OCLC member libraries "set" their holdings by attaching their OCLC symbols to bibliographic records in WorldCat. Having OCLC symbols attached to a record establishes that the institution holds the item.

A catalog containing the records from several libraries.

Programs that allow libraries to share the cost and responsibility of maintaining print collections are referred to as Shared print. Retention commitments for print resources may be registered with OCLC as part of a cataloging subscription.

Items that come to the institution from the materials vendor with labels affixed and ready to be put into the collection.

OCLC-MARC Bibliographic format used for cataloging musical and non-musical audio recordings; the three-character format designator for sound recordings is “REC”.

See Cataloging source .

Designates the source of a displayed bibliographic record in Connexion online and local save files: Derived, Extracted, Imported, Workform, OCLC, URL. Source status is system-assigned and appears in the status bar of a displayed record.

Graphic characters and diacritics other than those used in the Latin alphabet. See the documents International Cataloging: Use Non-Latin Scripts and BFAS 2.7 Character Set for more information.  See also Diacritic .

When an institution designates a general policy of limited retention for an item or parts of a continuing resource, a specific policy for that item or code may be recorded in field 008 bytes 13-15 of the Local Holdings Record (LHR). See also General retention policy .

See Label .

See Cataloging Source .

In Connexion client, shows status information at the bottom of a record or list or main client window. Stored only in the working copy of saved records, except for Report Error status. Not retained in the WorldCat record. See also Record statuses .

Words to be omitted from a search because they are so common that they have no informational value. Stop words are not indexed and are therefore ignored by the system if entered in a search. The stop word list may vary by service and/or interface. Examples:   a ,  an ,  and ,  or , and  the .

The smallest logical unit of information in a MARC variable field. Subfield codes (letters or numbers) identify subfields and are preceded by subfield delimiters (‡ or $). In OCLC cataloging interface displays, a subfield ‡a is implicit at the beginning of most fields, but does not display. See also Subfield delimiter .

Character (‡ or $, depending upon the OCLC cataloging interface display) followed by a single letter or number code, used to define the beginning of a subfield within a variable field in a MARC bibliographic or authority record. See also Subfield .

The topic treated, or matter discussed, in a resource. What a resource is about. Subject schemes (for example, Library of Congress Subject Headings [LCSH]) use a controlled vocabulary to categorize library materials about the same subject.

A specific word or phrase that describes the subject, or one of the subjects, of a resource, selected from a list of preferred terms (controlled vocabulary) and assigned as an access point in the bibliographic record for retrieving records in a database.

A subject heading may be subdivided by the addition of subheadings (example: Libraries--History--20th century) or include a parenthetical qualifier for semantic clarification, as in Mice (Computers).

Cross-references are used to indicate semantic relationships between subject headings.

The process of examining the content of a resource and assigning appropriate subject headings is called subject analysis.

Subjects categorize library material and provide controlled access to the content of resources. Schemes define concepts and relationships between concepts to support user navigation. Subject schemes, such as Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), use a controlled vocabulary; that is, they use the same terms to categorize the library material about the same subject. For example, a resource about atomic structure and another resource about neutrons can have the same subject entry, Nuclear physics.

A word, character(s), or phrase that appears in conjunction with, and is subordinate to, a title proper of a manifestation. Also known as other title information.

For visual materials, a subtitle is text displayed at the bottom of a moving image expression that is a translation, transcription, or paraphrase of the dialogue or narrative.

An institution that supplies items requested via WorldShare Interlibrary Loan. The institution's interlibrary loan polices may determine what items the institution supplies via the service.

A name used as a family name that may precede or follow a given name, depending on the culture.  See also Given name .

In WorldShare Interlibrary Loan, days that exclude Saturdays, Sundays, OCLC-observed holidays, or other days when interlibrary loan is unavailable; also known as "Non-referral days." OCLC does not count Saturdays, Sundays, and the following as working days for aging requests:

•        New Year's Day
•        United States Thanksgiving Day
•        Day after United States Thanksgiving
•        Christmas Eve
•        Christmas Day
•        New Year's Eve

See also   Calendar days .

A 3-character string used to identify or label an associated MARC field. Tags are grouped numerically by function.  See also Tag group .

MARC tags beginning with and grouped by the first digit according to function. For example, 1xx tags are primary access points, 2xx tags are titles, 3xx tags are for physical description, and so on. See also Tag .

See Magnetic tape .

Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. A set of computer programs that enables communication between similar or dissimilar computers on a network. Internet Protocol is the standard for sending data on the Internet.

Historical term: A prototype service which employed library and web standards to make the terms, relationships, and other information in controlled vocabularies available as resources on the web. This functionality was largely replaced by linked data services such as those offered by LC and the US National Library of Medicine. It was officially retired in 2015, but FAST headings remain accessible. See also FAST .

Often-used strings of text to insert into records multiple times; a shorter version of constant data. Text strings are available in both Connexion client and Record Manager. 

A cloud-based interlibrary loan management system that enables libraries to manage a high volume of requests, automate routine borrowing and lending functions, and provide an enhanced patron experience without heavy IT support, server management, or extensive configuration and training. See also ILL , ILLiad ,  Resource sharing , and WorldShare Interlibrary Loan .

A word, phrase, character, or group of characters, normally appearing on a resource, that names the manifestation or the work contained in it.

A conversion of text from one script to another (for example, Arabic script to Latin script) that involves exchanging characters in a standardized way, such as the ALA-LC Romanization Tables.

In Connexion client, the default display of WorldCat search results when a search retrieves 6 to 100 records. See also Brief list and Group list .

A special character (*) entered at the end of a root term in order to search for all variations of the term or phrase. Example: librar* retrieves library as well as libraries, librarian, and librarians .  See also   Wildcard (# or ?) .

Qualifier that limits bibliographic search results to specific formats: books (BKS), computer files (COM), continuing resources (CNR), maps (MAP), mixed materials (MIX), scores (SCO), sound recordings (REC), visual materials (VIS), etc.

The element in the OCLC-MARC fixed field that differentiates records created for various types of machine-readable information and specific types of material. Codes used in Type of Record (Leader/06) are also used in field 006.

See Full edition (DDC) .

A worldwide character encoding standard allowing processing, storing, and data exchange in any language or script. Unicode includes symbols, punctuation, and other characters such as diacritics in addition to textual characters. UTF-8 (Unicode Transformation Format 8 bit) is a term often used within the MARC context to refer to Unicode. UTF-8 is a variable-width character encoding capable of encoding all valid character code points in Unicode using one to four one-byte (8-bit) code units and is the most common encoding used for the World Wide Web.  See also   Non-Latin scripts  and  MARC-8 character sets .

Uniform title is the term used by AACR2, and Preferred title is the term used by RDA.  See Preferred title .

A list of the holdings of all the libraries in a library system. Also, a listing of all or a portion of the collections of a group of independent libraries, indicating by name and/or location symbol which libraries own at least one copy of each item. When the main purpose of a union catalog is to indicate location, the bibliographic description provided in each entry may be reduced to a minimum, but when it also serves other purposes, description is more complete. See also WorldCat (the OCLC Online Union Catalog) .

A complete list of the holdings of a group of libraries of materials (1) of a specific type, (2) on a certain subject, or (3) in a particular field, usually compiled for the purpose of resource sharing. The entry for each bibliographic item includes a list of codes representing the libraries owning at least one copy. Union lists are usually printed, but some have been converted into online databases.

A Data Sync procedure that matches records by field 035 (OCLC control number). Also known as Numeric Search Key.

A record that has failed to match any WorldCat record after being processed by the matching algorithms of OCLC Data Sync services and is added to the database via Data Sync processing as unindexed. The record is discoverable only by using the OCLC control number search. Institutions receive a report of these OCLC control numbers via an Unresolved Cross Reference File. See also Final OCLC actions and Resolved record .

An integrating resource that consists of one or more base volumes updated by separate pages that are inserted, removed, and/or substituted.

Defines all Connexion client settings, including those for logging on, local files, options, toolbars, customized keystroke shortcuts and text strings, session information, and more. Creating more than one user profile facilitates cataloging for more than one library (cataloging agents).

See Unicode .

When cataloging, examination of the data in certain fields for consistency and compliance with various rules via the Validate command in an online interface. This may be done for authority, bibliographic, local bibliographic data (LBD), and local holdings (LHR) records. The system also performs automatic validation on records when you execute certain commands such as Replace, Produce, Update, or Delete Holdings.

An error in the MARC format of a record as detected by OCLC system validation. Examples of validation errors include: invalid codes, tags, indicators, and subfields; missing required elements; and repetition of non-repeatable fields. 

Any variable field other than a MARC 00x control field. Each variable data field has a tag identifier, indicators, and subfields preceded first by a delimiter (‡ or $) and then by a single letter or number subfield code. Some variable fields may occur only once in a record; others can be repeated. Length of field data is variable. MARC 21 standards require that the number of characters in a field not exceed 9,999. See also Subfield .

A title or portion of the title associated with the resource recorded in the MARC 246 field. It differs from the title proper and contributes to discovery and identification of the resource.

Virtual Document eXchange, a standards-compliant interlibrary loan and document request management system initially developed by Fretwell-Downing (a company acquired by OCLC) for library groups that need greater local control of resource sharing with tight integration to local library systems. 

See   Local system vendor and Materials vendor .

Information such as barcodes, invoice numbers, invoice dates, and/or prices sent by a WorldCat Cataloging Partners vendor in a manifest that is added to the bibliographic records provided to institutions.  See also WorldCat Cataloging Partners .

Displays the list of institutional holding symbols attached to a bibliographic record; all symbols may be displayed, or they may be limited by state or region. Also known as Display holdings. In Record Manager, the list of institution holdings is part of the WorldCat holdings display.

See Visual Materials format .

OCLC-MARC Bibliographic format used for cataloging projected media, non-projected media, two-dimensional graphics, three-dimensional artifacts or naturally occurring objects, and kits; the three-character format designator for visual materials is “VIS”.

The electronic version of the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system.

An online community dedicated to the emerging technology and training needs of librarians. Originally created by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's U.S. Library Program, with OCLC and other partners. WebJunction is free to all libraries to use, regardless of size, type or location.

Entities from Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) that represent the products of intellectual or artistic endeavors used in RDA that stands for Work, Expression, Manifestation, Item. See also FRBR , Expression , Item , Manifestation , and Work .

All words, numbers, or character strings used to initiate a search for an entire indexed field in records. Whole phrase indexes are also browsable. See the document Searching WorldCat Indexes .

A special character used to represent one or more characters in a search term. The pound sign (#) represents a single character, and the question mark (?), alone or with a number, represents zero or more characters. Wildcards must be preceded by at least three characters in a term. Example:  wom#n  retrieves  women  or  woman; col?r  retrieves  color  or  colour .  See also   Truncation (*) .

A word, number, or character string used to initiate a search for a word in an indexed field in records. Word indexes are also browsable. See the document Searching WorldCat Indexes .

RDA defines a work as a distinct intellectual or artistic creation, that is, the intellectual or artistic content. The term work can refer to an individual work, an aggregate work, or a component of a work. See also FRBR , Expression , Item , Manifestation , and WEMI .

The part of a book number that consists of a letter appended to the author (or biographer) designation to show the first letter of the title (or first letter of the surname of the biographer). See also Book number .

In Connexion client, designates a record's position in your cataloging workflow within the online or local bibliographic save file. You select from a system-supplied list: Completed, In Process (default), In Review, or New. Displays in the status bar of a record.

An OCLC-MARC template used to create an original record or local holdings record in Connexion, also known as material type template in Record Manager. The system automatically supplies some of the appropriate fields and data, depending on the format you select for the resource you are cataloging.

A copy of the WorldCat record, displayed on the user's screen. When the user edits the working copy, the WorldCat record remains unchanged. Also called "editing locally."

Provides access to WorldCat bibliographic records and holdings using the FRBR concepts to pull together various editions of the same work. The API provides access to the WorldCat databases from clients that can send RESTful URI queries with either the OpenSearch or SRU protocols and can accept RSS, Atom, MARC XML or Dublin Core® responses.

A service formerly known as PromptCat that works in agreement between OCLC and library material vendors to provide copy cataloging, set WorldCat holdings, and deliver bibliographic records and spine labels for materials ordered from vendors. Cataloging partner collections are available via WorldShare Collection Manager.  See also Vendor-provided data .

Historical term: A past OCLC service that enabled a library's users to quickly have access to a newly purchased set of microform, nonmicroform, or electronic content by providing a matching, precataloged set of MARC records ready to load into the library's local system. Also previously known as Major Microforms. 

A cloud-based application that helps people easily find resources available at their library and in libraries worldwide through a single search. Library users and staff use their WorldCat Discovery instance to search the WorldCat database, to identify materials they need, and to see where they are available.

See View holdings .

The WorldCat knowledge base connects users to their library’s electronic content by combining data about a library’s e-resources with linking features that make the collections easier to find, share, manage and use. While managed through WorldShare Collection Manager, knowledge base data are not tied to a particular application, so libraries can streamline electronic content workflows across multiple systems. See also WorldShare Collection Manager .

The WorldCat knowledge base is made up of vendor-neutral and cooperatively maintained collections with content from libraries and publishers around the world. The WorldCat knowledge base also includes free and open-access collections that users can find and get alongside their library’s materials.  See also WorldShare Collection Manager .

WorldCat Local was replaced by WorldCat Discovery in 2019. See WorldCat Discovery .

An OCLC service that provides seamless resource sharing within a library consortium. The service manages returnable and nonreturnable items, and integrates with internal circulation systems and the wider OCLC resource sharing network to create a unique discovery-to-delivery service. See also Discovery to Delivery (D2D) .

OCLC service that allows users to access WorldCat through a search box that can be included in a variety of web sites. Users can find the items in a library or buy them directly.

The bibliographic record available to all OCLC cataloging users for copy cataloging. By policy, WorldCat contains only one WorldCat record per manifestation for each language of cataloging. Previously called the Master record, the WorldCat record does not include local data.

An online global directory of libraries, their locations, and the services they provide.

An online database of records cooperatively built from the bibliographic and ownership information of OCLC contributing libraries. The WorldCat database is the largest and most comprehensive of its kind. WorldCat is the foundation of many OCLC services that enable institutions to process, manage, and share information resources, including cataloging, resource sharing, reference, discovery, collection evaluation, and local holdings. WorldCat consists of three major components: a bibliographic catalog that includes everything available to library users, a knowledge base that connects library users to electronic content, and a registry of library profiles that allows libraries to maintain information about their services. The first bibliographic records were added to WorldCat in 1971.  Until being rebranded as WorldCat in 1997, it was known as the OCLC Online Union Catalog (OLUC).

An OCLC service available through WorldShare Collection Manager that facilitates catalog maintenance by automatically delivering updated MARC records to subscribing libraries.

OCLC cataloging tool that helps libraries streamline and automate the management of bibliographic records for their electronic and print collections in one place, while improving collection discovery and access.

Service that enables OCLC libraries to borrow and lend materials quickly and securely. It facilitates creating, sending, managing, and tracking loan requests and document orders. Built on the cloud-based WorldShare platform, WS ILL is available either as a stand-alone service or fully integrated with WorldShare Management Services. See also ILL , ILLiad ,  Resource Sharing , and Tipasa .

OCLC web-based cataloging tool for copy and original cataloging of individual records for physical or electronic library resources using either a MARC 21 editor or a Text View editor to access WorldCat.

A client-server protocol established as an ANSI/NISO standard that allows the computer user to query a remote information retrieval system using the software of the local system and receive results in the format of the local system. Often used in portal and gateway products to search several sources simultaneously and integrate the results.

OCLC service that enables libraries to use the Z39.50 interface to access WorldCat to search and retrieve MARC records for cataloging, edit records in local systems, and set holding information in WorldCat.

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bibliography

Definition of bibliography

Examples of bibliography in a sentence.

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'bibliography.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

probably from New Latin bibliographia , from Greek, the copying of books, from bibli- + -graphia -graphy

1689, in the meaning defined at sense 1

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1. introduction, 2. fundamentals and related work, 3. design of a dqa framework for irc measurement, 4. implementation of the dqa framework, 5. application and validation of the dqa framework, 6. discussion, 7. limitations, 8. conclusion and future work, author contributions, competing interests, funding information, data availability, assessing the quality of bibliographic data sources for measuring international research collaboration.

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Ba Xuan Nguyen , Markus Luczak-Roesch , Jesse David Dinneen , Vincent Larivière; Assessing the quality of bibliographic data sources for measuring international research collaboration. Quantitative Science Studies 2022; 3 (3): 529–559. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00211

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Measuring international research collaboration (IRC) is essential to various research assessment tasks but the effect of various measurement decisions, including which data sources to use, has not been thoroughly studied. To better understand the effect of data source choice on IRC measurement, we design and implement a data quality assessment framework specifically for bibliographic data by reviewing and selecting available dimensions and designing appropriate computable metrics, and then validate the framework by applying it to four popular sources of bibliographic data: Microsoft Academic Graph, Web of Science (WoS), Dimensions, and the ACM Digital Library. Successful validation of the framework suggests it is consistent with the popular conceptual framework of information quality proposed by Wang and Strong (1996) and adequately identifies the differences in quality in the sources examined. Application of the framework reveals that WoS has the highest overall quality among the sets considered; and that the differences in quality can be explained primarily by how the data sources are organized. Our study comprises a methodological contribution that enables researchers to apply this IRC measurement tool in their studies and makes an empirical contribution by further characterizing four popular sources of bibliographic data and their impact on IRC measurement.

https://publons.com/publon/10.1162/qss_a_00211

As collaboration across national borders promises advantages of shared resources and knowledge between nations ( Wagner, 2005 ), many governments have an interest in encouraging international research collaboration (IRC) through their science policy ( Peters, 2006 ). Because of that, it is essential to examine the productivity and impact of IRC between countries ( Zhou, Zhong, & Yu, 2013 ). However, developing measurements of IRC activities is a topic that has not been given much attention in bibliometrics scholarship ( Chen, Zhang, & Fu, 2019 ).

The most common indicator for IRC mentioned in bibliometric studies is coauthorship ( Aksnes, Piro, & Rørstad, 2019 ), which is often obtained from bibliographic data sources ( Nguyen, Luczak-Roesch et al., 2022 ). As credible data, together with appropriate models, are the two main contributors to the precise findings of an empirical study ( Heckman, 2005 ), the quality of bibliographic data sources used in measuring IRC is essential.

The quality of bibliographic data sources cannot be evaluated until the definition of data quality (DQ) has been well described for the particular task executed on bibliographic data. In the literature, DQ has commonly been defined as “fitness for use” ( Wang & Strong, 1996 ). The definition “fitness for use” implies that an aspect of DQ considered essential for one task may not be appropriate for another task. For instance, consistency is argued to play an important role in judging patents’ validity ( Burke & Reitzig, 2007 ) but accuracy is considered a core dimension of data quality in citation analysis ( Olensky, 2015 ). (It should be noted that dimensions refer to the aspects of DQ or sets of DQ attributes in DQ studies). Therefore, we should make clear what the key dimensions are in bibliographic studies that measure IRC. Furthermore, one dimension of DQ may have different definitions and corresponding metrics to measure it. The case of currency and timeliness dimensions is an example. Some studies consider them separate dimensions, while others treat currency as timeliness ( Zaveri, Rula et al., 2016 ). These varieties lead to the need to establish a dedicated DQ framework for the specific case of IRC measurement from bibliographic data.

In addition to these theoretical considerations DQ quality related to IRC measurement, there are practical research challenges. These challenges arise because there are different bibliographic data sources available to researchers on which IRC may be measured. This list includes multidisciplinary bibliographic data sources (such as Scopus, Web of Science [WoS], Dimensions, Crossref, and Microsoft Academic Graph) and domain-specific data sources (such as PubMed, IEEE Xplore, and ACM DL). These data sources vary in the licensing costs for their use, the range of data, and the intuitive “fitness for use.” For example, Microsoft Academic Graph is a multidisciplinary bibliographic data source that can be freely downloaded from the Internet. At the same time, PubMed, a database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics, is behind a paywall. It is of interest to researchers to choose the most suitable data source from a wide range of available options for IRC measurement.

How well are different bibliographic data sources suited to measure International Research Collaboration?

Which dimensions are relevant to a data quality assessment (DQA) framework for IRC measurement?

Which dimensions from the DQA framework reflect differences in the primary data sources for IRC measurement?

How can the DQA framework developed be applied to choose the most suitable data source for IRC measurement?

To answer these above research questions, we developed an instrument for DQA in IRC. We then validated this instrument by using it to assess and compare the DQ of four widely used bibliographic data sets.

Our study contributes to understanding DQ in the IRC measurement domain. We identify a list of possible DQs relevant to reflect data quality for IRC measurement. We also implement a “metadata crosswalk” to see how attributes of bibliographic data sources connect to the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) model’s constructs. We apply this “metadata crosswalk” to select the relevant DQs for our DQA framework. This approach implies a methodological contribution to the DQ domain. In addition, our study has practical implications. We propose a complete set of computable metrics for each specific DQ in the DQA framework built to evaluate bibliographic data sources. Our DQA framework and its sets of computable metrics provide a baseline for researchers to apply in their own IRC measurement studies. We also prove how to apply our DQA framework to evaluate DQ for IRC measurement and suggest the most suitable data sources from a list of common bibliographic data sources surveyed in the present study ( Nguyen, Dinneen, & Luczak-Roesch, 2022 ).

This paper is structured as follows: First, Section 2 introduces a brief description of the fundamentals and related work of DQA for IRC measurement. We then break down our analyses and results into three distinct parts: design, implementation, and application of a new DQA framework for IRC measurement. Section 3 reports our design of a DQA framework for IRC measurement. Section 4 describes the implementation of the DQA framework being designed. Section 5 explores the application and validation of this DQA framework. Next, Sections 6 and 7 present discussions and limitations of this paper, respectively. The paper ends with conclusions and suggestions for future work in Section 8 .

Figure 1 represents the main phases of the process implemented in Sections 3 – 5 .

Overview of the process assessing the quality of bibliographic data sources for IRC measurement.

2.1. Conceptualization of International Research Collaboration

Within an academic context, the term collaboration refers to various activities, including work on a research project undertaken by a team, cooperation between stakeholders from industry and academics, or the collaboration between students and teachers. In general, such collaboration is carried out to share resources, ideas, equipment, and data ( Wagner, 2005 ) between nations, organizations, and individuals.

In the present paper, international research collaboration is a construct that refers specifically to scientific research activities between individuals from different countries. Although cross-border cooperation in science started as early as the 19th century ( Beaver & Rosen, 1978 ), international collaboration multiplied after the Second World War and has since become an ever-growing trend following globalization ( Beaver, 2001 ) and facilitated by advanced technology, tools, and workflows ( Anuradha & Urs, 2007 ; Zhou et al., 2013 ) and government support ( Hatakenaka, 2008 ). Consequently, policy makers need to benchmark and measure IRC over time to assess the impact of pro-IRC policy, initiatives, and support (i.e., to examine how much they have improved their “level” of IRC). Therefore, IRC measurement has become a central focus of IRC research ( Chen et al., 2019 ).

2.2. Bibliometric Approaches to the Measurement of International Research Collaboration

In general, there are various approaches to measure research collaboration. Traditional bibliometrics and other approaches to measuring scholarly and scientific publishing are available, such as altmetrics or webometrics. Among them, traditional bibliometrics is frequently used in studies of research collaboration ( Downing, Temane et al., 2021 ).

IRC measurement in bibliometric studies can be implemented variously. One difference stems from the different ways to operationalize “international” according to different definitions of or ideas about IRC. Studies have, for example, used either authors’ listed affiliations or authors’ PhD locations and countries of birth. However, using affiliations listed in publications has become the standard and convenient practice for operationalizing the “international” attribute ( Chen et al., 2019 ). The development of international coauthored papers has perhaps reinforced this practice. As publications with international research collaborations, on average, receive a higher number of citations ( Glänzel & Schubert, 2001 ; Schmoch & Schubert, 2008 ), it seems beneficial for researchers to engage in collaborative research. Over time, both the number and the ratio of multinational publications have been on the rise ( Fortunato, Bergstrom et al., 2018 ).

In IRC measurement, the variety of data sources used to analyze coauthorship may be problematic. Various data sets can be used for coauthorship analysis, available from different sources (e.g., WoS, Google Scholar and nationally funded research projects). However, different data sources may lead to different results ( De Stefano, Fuccella et al., 2013 ). This fact raises the questions of how to evaluate the quality of these data sources for IRC measurement and what criteria should be used to rank them so that IRC can be measured accurately.

2.3. DQ Assessment

Intrinsic DQ , which includes Believability , Accuracy , Objectivity , and Reputation .

Contextual DQ , which includes Value-added , Relevancy , Timeliness , Completeness , and Appropriate amount of data .

Representational DQ , which includes Interpretability , Ease of understanding , Representational consistency , and Concise representation .

Accessibility DQ , which includes Accessibility , and Access security .

Each dimension of DQ can be measured by a list of specific metrics. For example, the Completeness dimension may be measured by relevant subdimensions: schema completeness , property completeness , and population completeness , each with its own implemented metric ( Zaveri et al., 2016 ).

Therefore, the quality of data is evaluated by the process of DQA , to examine whether some data meet the consumers’ needs in a specific use case ( Bizer & Cyganiak, 2009 ). In this process, each dimension of data is evaluated subjectively or objectively. Subjective DQAs reflect stakeholders’ needs and experiences, while in so-called objective assessments, organizations follow a set of principles to develop metrics specific to their needs ( Pipino, Lee, & Wang, 2002 ).

The framework by Wang and Strong (1996) is adopted by the present study as a starting point for designing a DQ assessment framework for bibliographic data because of its empirical generation of DQ categories and its canonical role in DQ assessment ( Cichy & Rass, 2019 ); it is widely cited in DQ literature and has, for example, led to the development of a subgroup of DQ assessment studies ( Xiao et al., 2014 ) that developed further metrics for DQDs such as completeness and relevance ( Zhu & Wu, 2011 ), currency ( Heinrich & Klier, 2010 ), and accuracy ( Närman, Holm et al., 2011 ).

Scientometrics has recently been concerned about the effects of the quality of bibliographic data and altmetrics on their studies ( Bornmann & Haunschild, 2018 ; Strotmann & Zhao, 2015 ). For example, the accuracy of name disambiguation can change the results of coauthorship network models ( Kim, Kim, & Diesner, 2014 ) and statistical analysis methods of author co-citation analysis ( Strotmann & Zhao, 2012 ). There are also many publicly available data sets for building citation networks that shape the scientific influence ( Van Holt, Johnson et al., 2016 ) so the quality of data is important to scientometrics.

Although there have been studies researching different aspects of bibliographic data sources’ DQ, these studies have not examined DQA with possible dimensions thoroughly. These studies have often examined the bibliographic data’s quality in two approaches. The first approach is to evaluate a specific dimension of bibliographic sources’ DQ quantitatively. Regarding the completeness dimension, two major multidisciplinary databases—Scopus and Thomson-Reuters databases ( Martín-Martín, Orduna-Malea et al., 2018 )—have been explored to assess the extent to which data elements are absent ( Jacsó, 2009 ). The results show that the rate of missing country data is high (e.g., there is a 34% omission rate of country metadata in Scopus and 14% in Thomson-Reuters’ WoS). Another example of examining a specific dimension is the study by Sinha, Shen et al. (2015) , in which the accuracy of the MAG data source is proved to maintain 95% accuracy.

The second approach is to compare various bibliographic data sources for IRC measurement by analyzing specific criteria, such as suitability ( Hennemann, Wang, & Liefner, 2011 ) or coverage ( Singh, Singh et al., 2021 ). Regarding journal coverage, for example, Dimensions had more unique journals than Scopus, and WoS had the least number ( Singh et al., 2021 ). However, these studies show the differences between bibliographic data sources rather than evaluating them with a relevant DQ framework.

Our literature review confirms that DQA in IRC measurement is an understudied area.

3.1. Objectives

To assess the quality of bibliographic data sources for IRC measurement, we wanted to identify relevant dimensions. For this purpose, two objectives needed to be achieved. First, we wanted to create an inventory of possible data quality dimensions (DQDs). Second, the DQDs identified needed to be assessed for their relevance to IRC measurement. The result was a selection of DQDs that apply to IRC measurement.

3.2. Methods

A systematic review of the literature was conducted to create an inventory of possible DQDs. Specifically, our focus was on the DQDs of bibliographic data sources, and we used Google Scholar as the first tool to retrieve literature. We selected Google Scholar because this tool has been observed to always find more citations for each journal than any others among ResearchGate, WoS, and Scopus ( Thelwall & Kousha, 2017 ). We searched for publications having the terms “bibliographic data” or “bibliographic records” in the title. Furthermore, we then filtered the retrieved articles further for those with additional keywords in their content (the content keywords used were “quality dimension,” “data quality,” and “quality assessment”). The papers found were initially skimmed to determine whether they discussed DQDs. We then applied the citation pearl-growing method ( Harter, 1997 ) to find relevant sources on this topic. The collection of DQDs discussed in these papers was the inventory of possible DQDs for the present study.

Because, to our knowledge, there are no explicit studies of IRC DQDs, we had to make such a list by assessing the relevance of DQDs for IRC tasks. In detail, we assessed which attributes from each data source are necessary and sufficient for IRC measurement and whether the definition of each dimension (of DQ in general, not just of bibliographic DQ) could be relevant to this task. This approach includes two phases. To begin, we mapped the attributes of the most popular bibliographic data sources to entities in the FRBR model, an entity-relationship model of bibliographic records ( IFLA Study Group on the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records, 1998 ). By mapping attributes of data sources to the corresponding FRBR entities, we could easily compare them and find which attributes were needed for IRC measurement. We then assessed the relevance of each DQD by considering how it could be meaningfully applied to measure IRC using the attributes found.

3.3. Results

3.3.1. inventory of possible dqds.

Possible data dimensions were gathered from the list of papers found in reviewing the literature. Table S1 (in the Supplementary material ) shows these DQDs with their definitions. For each DQD, one definition relevant to bibliographic data, or at least relevant to a broader concept than bibliographic data, was extracted. The earliest definition was chosen when there were many definitions for a data dimension. In the case that many data dimensions had similar definitions across multiple papers, only the data dimension described at first was chosen.

The chosen dimensions from the above table were assessed for their relevance to IRC in the next section.

3.3.2. Relevant DQDs for IRC

In the first phase of listing relevant DQDs for IRC, an existing model of bibliographic resources—Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Resources or FRBR ( IFLA Study Group on the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records, 1998 )—was applied to the four data sources’ attributes (i.e., fields were put into the model’s categories) to enable comparison across them. The four data sources examined were Microsoft Academic Graph (MAG) 1 , Dimensions (publications) 2 , WoS Core Collection, and ACM Digital Library (ACM DL) 3 . The first was a domain-specific resource covering the computing sciences, while the others were considered among the most important bibliographic data sources covering all fields of study ( Waltman & Larivière, 2020 ). The summary of the four data sources is given in Table 1 .

Summary of the four data sources under the survey

The result of the categorization is shown in Table S2 . In this table, the two entities person and corporate body were presented together because the bibliographic data sources discussed here do not always store them separately. For instance, the attribute “Author Address” of WoS might contain information about either the personal authors’ home addresses or their affiliations’ addresses. Additionally, only general or article attributes are shown for legibility, while proceedings’ attributes (e.g., found only in the ACM DL) are omitted.

To measure IRC, the following information was needed: the countries of authors collaborating on a work (e.g., derived from affiliation data), and the date that work was published. Therefore, information about the time of manifestation of that work (from now on called time published ) and the country of (the corporate body of) each person creating that work (from now on called countries involved ) had to be presented in bibliographic records for the particular task of IRC measurement. The corresponding attributes (implementing manifestation , and implementing person and/or corporate body of a work ) in the four data sources being studied were presented together in a “metadata crosswalk” in Table S3 . In this table, the necessary attributes related to time published or countries involved were presented in bold.

As explained above, the second phase of listing relevant DQDs for IRC is assessing the relevance of the chosen DQDs for IRC measurement. In this phase, we assessed how these DQDs could be evaluated with the attributes found. Consequently, there is one functional requirement applied in this phase: The DQs should be evaluated with only the bibliographic data source. Table S4 indicates whether or not the definition of each DQD (being chosen in phase 1) can be meaningfully applied to measure IRC using the attributes found and provides the rationale for each.

After completing the second approach described above, seven DQDs were found to be relevant to IRC studies: Accuracy , Appropriate amount of data , Completeness , Concise representation , Ease of Understanding , Relevancy , and Representational consistency . In our objective assessment approach, the relevance criterion was that the DQDs selected could be evaluated by the attributes found in the bibliographic data sources. These seven DQDs were among the 15 most important dimensions to data customers, presented in the conceptual framework of DQ in the study by Wang and Strong (1996) . In their study, Wang and Strong (1996) came up with these 15 most important dimensions by asking data consumers to rate the importance of possibly relevant dimensions. Therefore, this fitness suggested a benefit that we could apply these DQDs’ importance weights when we used our DQA framework to evaluate the bibliographic data sources (in Section 5 of the present study). Without applying these DQDs’ importance weights from Wang and Strong’s study, we would have had to repeat the survey ourselves to get the customers’ rates, which would have been time-consuming.

Figure 2 shows how these DQDs fit into the conceptual framework of data quality proposed by Wang and Strong (1996) .

The conceptual framework of information quality, proposed by Wang and Strong (1996) , with the seven relevant DQDs (underlined) examined in the present study.

The other eight DQDs were not selected because they could not be evaluated with the bibliographic data sources’ attributes relevant to IRC measurement (as presented in Table S3 ). In detail, three of them could only be assessed objectively (Accessibility, Security, and Timeliness) but there was insufficient information. The remaining five DQDs (namely Believability, Interpretability, Objectivity, Reputation, and Value Added) could be assessed objectively with external data sources, or be assessed subjectively (e.g., with users’ opinions) ( Zaveri et al., 2016 ). For example, Reputation could be evaluated by asking the data users to rate the data sources, or by using available ranking sources. Although adding these remaining five DQDs could add more information for the data sources’ evaluation, it would be time-consuming (e.g., doing surveys) or out of scope here (using external ranking data sources would need additional assessment of these data sources’ quality as well). Therefore, it was impractical to include the DQDs that could not be evaluated with the bibliographic data sources’ attributes and they might be considered in future work.

The seven DQDs that were considered relevant to IRC measurement in this section were operationalized in the next section to implement the DQ assessment.

4.1. Objectives

There were two objectives to operationalize DQDs identified in the prior section. First, we wanted to finalize a list of relevant metrics for each DQD. These metrics had to be practical to implement and appropriate for IRC measurement. Second, each metric’s implementation form had to be specified to measure the data sources surveyed.

4.2. Methods

The present study followed two steps for implementing the DQDs framework. First, we listed possible operationalizations for metrics. To do that, we considered the metrics mentioned in papers studying the quality of bibliographic data (identified in Section 2 ). However, most of these papers did not fully describe the metrics’ definitions. Therefore, the descriptions of possible metrics for the above DQDs, reviewed by Zaveri et al. (2016) , were used as the initial collection of possible metrics (as displayed in Table S5 ). In this table, these metrics were also assessed as to whether or not they could be used for IRC measurement. There is one functional requirement that our study applied to choosing metrics for evaluating data sources’ quality: The metrics should be computable. Some new metrics relevant to IRC measurement and practical for implementation were also built, from the definitions of relevant dimensions by Wang and Strong (1996) . These consist of the explicitly appropriate amount of data and implicitly appropriate amount (for measuring Appropriate amount of data), consistent standard and consistent syntax (for measuring Representational consistency), separate form of time and country information (for measuring Concise representation ), and presence of relevant vocabularies and correct spelling (for measuring Ease of Understanding). In this step, six of the seven dimensions selected were successfully operationalized by practical metrics.

Second, we specified specific types of operationalization for the metrics. The metrics chosen from the above table were then implemented to measure data quality for the task of IRC measurement. There are three functional (arithmetic) forms among the implementations of the metrics: Simple Ratio, Min or Max Operation, and Weighted Average ( Pipino et al., 2002 ). While Simple Ratio is the measure that shows the ratio of desired outcomes to total outcomes of every single metric, Min or Max Operation and Weighted Average are used to measure the combination of many metrics. Therefore, these above metrics were first implemented in the form of a simple ratio, as presented in Table S6 . The two remaining functional forms (i.e., Min or Max Operation and Weighted Average) were considered to be used in comparing different ways to aggregate many metrics of a DQD in Section 5.3.3 of the present study.

4.3. Results

Table S6 shows the metrics’ operationalization with the explanation.

D M : the set of data points that have missing values, D M ⊆ D

D E : the set of data points that have explicit information of affiliations’ nationalities, D E ⊆ (D − D M )

D I : the set of data points that do not have explicit information of affiliations’ nationalities, but their information can implicitly refer to affiliations’ nationalities, D I ⊆ (D − D M − D E )

P C : the set of possible countries may be included in a set of observations of D. In our study, this population includes all countries in the list ISO 3166 published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

P Y : the set of possible years may be included in a particular set of observations of D. For instance, we checked the availability of each year in the time coverage from 1980–2017.

Table S7 shows how metric assessments depend on others. For example, the value of EoU Voc depends on the value of Com Pro . In other words, the more observations satisfy the EoU Voc measurement, the more observations will be tested with the Com Pro measurement.

The metrics identified and built in this section were used to assess the independence of DQDs across different data sources and to rank these data sources in the next section.

5.1. Objectives

From the prior section, a DQA framework was built with 10 specific metrics for six DQ dimensions. In this section, three consecutive objectives needed to be achieved to illustrate how this DQA framework works for IRC measurement. First, we wanted to obtain the results of operationalizing DQDs to data sources. Such results reflected the data sources’ data quality. Second, the independence of DQDs across data sources should be assessed. In other words, we wanted to know whether the results measured by our DQA framework changed according to a particular bibliographic data source used for IRC studies. Third, the data sources’ ranking should be gained by applying the developed DQA framework to determine the most suitable data source for IRC measurement.

5.2. Methods

5.2.1. method to apply operationalized dqds to data sources.

To demonstrate the metric framework developed in Section 4 , we calculated the 10 selected metrics (of the six selected DQDs) on each of the data sources. In other words, we quantified the data quality of each data source for IRC measurement.

Specifically, 10 metrics ( Table S7 , “Metric” column) were used to measure the data quality of data sources.

The 10 metrics were calculated as the ratios of data points that satisfied these metrics’ definitions to the total data points examined for each metric ( Table S6 , “Formula” column). It was impractical to do a calculation on the whole data set because the numbers of publications in Dimensions, MAG, and WoS were quite large ( Table 1 ) so it would take several months to calculate the metrics’ values. To avoid the length of processing time incurred due to data size, we sampled these data sources for calculation instead. For each of the largest data sources (Dimensions, MAG, and WoS) a sample size of 40 blocks of data, 10,000 data points each, was randomly selected to be used for this purpose. Specifically, the sampling process was done in two steps for each data source. First, the whole set of data points was split into a list of blocks of 10,000 data points each. Second, a random number generator was initiated by the function setseed(0), and then a random sample of size 40 was generated by using the function sample() with replacement. Estimates were made to give the likely ranges for metrics’ values of these data sources in the period 1980–2017, while measures on ACM DL (which had 416,439 data points correspondingly) gave the exact metrics’ values. Figure 3 shows the distributions of data points in the Dimensions, MAG, and WoS data sources’ samples, and the whole ACM DL data source per year. In this figure, the four data sources’ distributions had similar temporal trends. The numbers of publications’ data points increase over time in general, with a decrease in the last year 2017 of ACM DL, Dimensions, and MAG (possibly due to the incomplete data of this year in these data sources). The only exception in the trends is the case of ACM DL, which shows a sharp decrease in a short period after the year 2000. This exception can be explained as the dot-com bubble crisis’ impact on computing research expenditures in the late 1990s.

The number of data points (i.e., collaborations; y -axis) of four data sets (the plotted lines): all 40 random data samples for each of the three bibliographic data sets (Dimensions, MAG, WoS) and of the whole ACM DL data set, across the years ( x -axis).

Because data samples were randomly taken from each of WoS, Dimensions, and MAG, we also checked whether these samples are biased samples. For this purpose, we compared the distributions of the three data sources’ samples by year. Figure 4 shows that the distributions of data points’ years across data blocks in each data set’s sample are not notably different (and they are also similar to the corresponding data source’s total trend in Figure 3 ).

The distribution of the 40 random data samples (lines) across the years ( x ) for each of the three bibliographic data sets; each sample consists of 10,000 data points (i.e., collaborations; y ).

As we estimated the values from sampled data blocks, the two types of values for each metric surveyed were evaluated as below.

We first calculated the average values of the 10 selected metrics on the above data sources. The variances of these values among 40 data blocks were also presented to evaluate the average values’ spread.

To be more exact, we wanted to find the likely range for the metrics’ actual values. We then estimated the confidence interval for each metric measured on Dimensions, MAG, and WoS. According to the central limit theorem, the distribution of either the sum or the mean of a random sample of large size (a sample size of 30 is a rule of thumb for large size) is approximately normal ( Anderson, 2010 ). Because we had a large sample with 40 data blocks (≥ 30), the central limit theorem could be applied in this case. In other words, the average values of each metric measured on randomly selected data blocks are approximately normally distributed (even though the data from which they are sampled is not necessarily normal). As a result, a 95% confidence interval for each metric’s average value on the whole data source could be estimated.

5.2.2. Methods to assess the independence of DQDs

We wanted to check how much the results measured by the chosen metrics across different data sources varied. We carried out this activity by doing analyses at the data source level: (a) comparing the metrics’ values across data sources, and (b) comparing the correlations between each pair of metrics among data sources. First, we used ANOVA tests to check whether the differences between the averages of metrics across data sources were statistically significant. Second, we compared the correlations between each pair of metrics across data sources. Pearson correlation coefficient with a confidence level of 95% was produced for the metric values of 40 data blocks from each data source.

Considering that ACM DL is a domain-specific bibliographic source in the computing sciences, we also wondered whether the nature of a specific domain could affect the data quality. In other words, we wanted to check at the data source’s subset level: (c) whether the metrics’ values vary by discipline or not. We assumed that the above metrics worked consistently across different disciplines on data sources, and therefore, the validity of including a domain-specific source in this study was ensured. To access this consistency, we measured their values on subsets of the data sources: Dimensions, MAG, and WoS (ACM DL, meanwhile, contained records of the Computer Science discipline only and was not examined).

The whole process of the above three tests is summarized in Figure 5 . In this process, the task of assessing the independence of DQDs included three small steps.

A summary of the process of assessing the independence of DQDs.

First, we prepared data for calculating the metrics. As it was impractical to calculate the values of metrics for the whole data source, we wanted to calculate on every sample of 40 randomly selected data blocks, each having the size of 10,000 data points for each data source. Similarly, we wanted to calculate the metrics’ values on samples of data sources’ subsets reflecting different disciplines for Dimensions, MAG, and WoS. Therefore, we needed to separate each of these data sources into many discipline subsets. This task of preparing discipline subsets for each data source was implemented as follows.

We separated Dimensions into subsets by disciplines. The Dimensions data source could be easily split into 22 subsets, using its single-valued “field of research” attribute ( category_for ).

We then separated MAG into subsets by disciplines. However, the MAG data source did not appear to have clearly defined categories for disciplines. We realized that MAG did not include such a single-valued attribute for determining a publication’s solely discipline as Dimensions did. The “field of study” attribute ( fos ) of MAG, of which values were generated by applying a natural language processing technique ( Shen, Ma, & Wang, 2018 ), could have multiple values. Therefore, we split the MAG data source into 22 corresponding subsets in three steps. First, we took 22 samples, each of 1,000 random papers from each subset of Dimensions. Second, each sample’s papers were checked to see whether they existed in the MAG data source or not. If yes, we obtained a list of relevant fos values found from matched papers in the MAG data source for each sample. These lists were then filtered with the most relevant values. (Some overlapped fos were detected and removed to keep these lists exclusive. For example, the fos “Mathematics” appeared in both the lists for “Mathematical Sciences” papers and “Information and Computing Sciences” papers. However, it was kept in the list for the former only.) Third, we organized MAG papers into 22 subsets by comparing their fos values with the above 22 lists of separate “fields of studies.”

The last data source to separate into disciplines was WoS. This data source could be easily split into five subsets using its “research area” attribute. Because there were multiple research areas assigned to each paper, only the first area for each paper was used. For example, if a paper has the assigned research areas “Business & Economics” and “Women’s Studies” we categorized it into the discipline “Business & Economics.”

Second, we calculated the metrics’ values. These metrics were applied both to different data sources and to different disciplines in each data source.

Third, we assessed the independence of the DQDs in our DQA framework. We applied an ANOVA (single factor) technique to inspect the differences in metrics’ values across the four data sources under study. We then tested correlations between the metrics measured on these data sources to check whether there were any notable relationships between every pair of these metrics. We also applied ANOVA to inspect the differences in metrics’ values across the subsets of each data source.

5.2.3. Methods to rank data sources using combined measures

A possible method to combine the metrics’ values in a DQA framework is to assess the consistency of people’s responses across the metrics’ uses by an internal consistency reliability test. This test would be useful to examine the extent to which the metrics measure the same DQDs, but it was impractical for this study because surveys would be needed to collect users’ evaluations. Therefore, we tried to apply the following alternatives.

In the present study, the values measured by different DQDs were aggregated at two levels: the metric level and the dimension level. First, the values measured by different metrics in a DQD, in general, could be aggregated by applying Min/Max operation or by assigning a Weighted Average. For instance, the Completeness dimension could be calculated in the present study by the two metrics: property completeness and population completeness. A conservative approach would be choosing the lowest value among those received from the three metrics mentioned above. However, this approach did not work for every metric in the present study. For example, the Appropriate amount of data dimension had two metrics: Appropriate Data - Explicitly , and Appropriate Data - Implicitly . These two metrics were exclusive because they were measured on two different subsets of each data source. Therefore, this approach was excluded from the present study. Another approach was calculating a weighted average for the two corresponding metrics’ values in the Completeness dimension. Because we had no evidence about each metric’s contribution to the DQDs applied for IRC measurement, the equally weighted average was chosen. For the example of the Completeness dimension, two metrics measuring a DQD were assigned an equal value of 0.5 each.

Second, the aggregated values of DQDs were also combined, either with a set of Equally Weighted Average or a set of weights derived from Wang and Strong (1996) . The first set contained equal weights for each of the dimensions. Because we had six dimensions implemented, each was assigned an equal weight of 0.17. The second set applied the importance rating values of DQDs. The corresponding values were derived from the study by Wang and Strong (1996) for this purpose. This derivation was because the six dimensions implemented fit Wang and Strong’s conceptual framework of data quality (as mentioned in Section 3 ), and our metrics were also selected and built following the definitions of dimensions in this framework (as mentioned in Section 4 ).

5.3. Results

5.3.1. values of dqds operationalized to data sources.

The 10 metrics were calculated as the ratios of data points that satisfied these metrics’ definitions to the total data points. For example, the metric Concise representation - Separate Form of Time and Country Information was assessed by examining data sources’ structures to see whether a separate attribute existed for each of time and country information. For IRC measurement, just information of the year has been commonly used in the calculation. Table S2 shows that all four data sources surveyed (ACM DL, Dimensions, MAG, and WoS) have a particular attribute storing information about the years of IRC papers published. However, only Dimensions has a separate attribute (which is research_org_countries ) indicating the country of affiliations, while MAG and ACM DL store this information and other information (e.g., affiliations’ names, state codes, state names) in a combined attribute ( authors.org and content.article_rec.authors.au.affiliation, respectively). We calculate the ratio of data points having the smallest set of complete data to the total number of data points. A data point was considered compact when all attributes storing information about year and country were complete and optimized in length. For example, a data point containing “1995” and “Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany” was not considered compact. The reason was that although “1995” was the compact form for the year attribute, the phrase “Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany: was not the smallest set of complete data for the country attribute as only “Germany” was needed to identify the nationality.

Table 2 shows the average values of these metrics, which were measured using ANOVA.

Average values of metrics calculated by data sources chosen

The values in Table 2 show measurements made of the whole ACM DL and a sample of only 40 randomly selected data blocks of each of the other data sources (WoS, MAG, and Dimensions). Notably, the variances among the averages calculated from the data blocks of each data source (i.e., WoS/MAG/Dimensions) were calculated and it was seen that they were relatively small (< 0.01). In other words, there was minimal skew in the data blocks. Therefore, these average values of metrics measured on samples could be considered closely approximate to the true values of metrics that would be observed if they were measured on the whole data sources.

Table S8 shows a 95% confidence interval for the average value of each metric on the whole data source. The table shows that there are only two out of 10 metrics that had notable variations (> 0.5%) in their confidence interval for MAG data source and WoS data source. They are Completeness - Population (M2) and Appropriate Data - Implicitly (M4). However, these variation values are small in comparison to the differences between the mentioned two metrics across data sources. Therefore, we could use the average values of metrics when assessing the independence of DQDs across data sources in the following step.

5.3.2. The independence of DQDs

The independence of dqds across data sources.

All 10 metrics were calculated on data points from these data sources. Table 3 shows the values of these 10 DQDs’ metrics measured on different data sources.

Comparing the values of metrics across different data sources

Completeness of Property (M1): The average ratio of this metric on MAG is lower than those on ACM DL, Dimensions, and WoS (39.9% compared to 85.9%, 76.1%, and 100%, respectively). These differences mean that MAG has more missed or empty values (e.g., Null/NA) for the expected affiliations of corresponding authors than other data sources do.

Appropriate Data - Explicitly (M3): The average ratios of this metric on Dimensions and WoS are notably higher, and that on ACM DL is lower than the value measured on MAG (89.3%, 91.6%, and 49.9% compared to 67.8%, respectively). These differences mean that Dimensions and WoS have more explicit “country” information in the nonempty data points while ACM DL has the least ratio of explicit “country” information.

Appropriate Data - Implicitly (M4): The average ratios of this metric on Dimensions and MAG are notably lower, and that on WoS is the highest in comparison to the value measured on ACM DL (11.5%, 17% and 80% compared to 41.8%, respectively). This difference means that Dimensions and MAG have less implicit “country” information from the data points that do not include explicit information than ACM DL, while WoS has the highest implicit “country” information ratio.

EoU - Correct Spelling (M7): The average score of this metric on WoS is lower than those on ACM DL, Dimensions, and MAG (18.2% compared to 57.9%, 49.1%, and 39.3%, respectively).

Concise representation - Compact Form of Time and Country Information (M8): The average scores of this metric on ACM DL and MAG are especially lower than those on Dimensions and WoS (0.5% and 0.5% compared to nearly 79.8% and 56%, respectively).

Consistency - Standard (M9): The average ratios of this metric on ACM DL and Dimensions are higher than those on MAG and WoS (75% and 60.5% compared to 45.6% and 47.8%, respectively). This difference means that ACM DL and Dimensions have more affiliations following a consistent standard in the nonempty data points (than MAG and WoS do).

As we noted from the previous step, the estimated values of M2 and M4 had a slightly notable variation (> 0.5%) in their confidence intervals for the MAG data source. We then were cautiously afraid that such notable variation might affect the accuracy of results in accessing the independence of DQDs across data sources (in this step). However, as we can notice in Table 3 , the p -values of testing M1 and M2 are < 0.001. In other words, they provided strong evidence that the differences between ACM DL, Dimensions, MAG, and WoS are statistically significant.

There are three results from the above findings. First, the values of different DQDs’ metrics varied across data sets. Second, five dimensions reflect the differences in data from primary sources for IRC measurement: Appropriate amount of data , Completeness , Concise representation , Ease of Understanding , and Representational consistency . Third, there are more “better” results when the metrics were measured on WoS and Dimensions than on MAG.

The independence of DQDs across disciplines

Table S9 shows the p -values of the ANOVA test analyzing metrics calculated across these disciplines in Dimensions. These values measured on Dimensions subsets by every metric were different clearly. All the p -values were small (*** means p -value ≤ 0.001), showing that these differences were statistically significant.

Then we analyzed metrics calculated across these disciplines in MAG. Because the MAG data source did not include an attribute mentioning the papers’ disciplines, we needed to classify MAG papers into relevant subsets. Using the fos values of sampled papers appearing in both the MAG data source and each of Dimensions’ 22 subsets divided by discipline, we could identify and separate 85% of MAG papers into 22 corresponding subsets. Table S10 shows the p -values of the ANOVA test analyzing metrics calculated across these disciplines in MAG. These values measured on MAG subsets by every metric were clearly different. All the p -values were small (*** means p -value ≤ 0.001), showing that these differences were statistically significant.

Table S11 shows the variance values of 10 metrics calculated across disciplines, measured on WoS. Except for the two metrics M1 and M10, which had all values at 1, the other metrics show significant differences ( p -value ≤ 0.001) when they were measured on WoS subsets.

Tables S11 show that the values of our developed DQDs’ metrics were different across disciplines, and these differences were statistically significant.

The correlation values of each pair of metrics are given in Tables S12–S15 for ACM DL, Dimensions, MAG, and WoS, respectively (all p -values were nearly 0).

In Tables S12 – S15 , MAG shows two strong linear relationships (correlation coefficient value > 0.7) between metrics and WoS shows a strong linear relationship. For MAG, the relationships are between Completeness - Property (M1) and one of the two metrics: Completeness - Population (M2), Accuracy - Free of Malformed Datatype (M5). For WoS, the relationship is between Concise representation - Compact Form of Time and Country Information (M8) and Consistency - Standard (M9). These relationships are not common across the data sources. In other words, the metrics applied reflected different aspects of the bibliographic sources’ quality dimensions. Therefore, it is not necessary to remove or restructure any metric above.

5.3.3. Ranks of data sources

As mentioned in Section 5.2.3 , we considered using the importance ratings of DQDs proposed by Wang and Strong (1996) . This study computed the average of the importance ratings for dimensions from data consumers, but these were in reversed order (i.e., lower values indicate higher importance of the respective dimension). Consequently, we converted these values by subtracting the maximum value of the survey’s Likert-type scale (9, on a scale from 1 to 9) from each of these average values. The weights were then calculated by taking the proportions of the inverse values. The results are shown in Table 4 .

The weights built from the importance ratings by Wang and Strong (1996)  

Therefore, the values received in column 3 in Table 4 were weights derived from Wang and Strong (1996) . They were then used as a way to weigh the DQDs. Table 5 presents weights for metrics and two different sets of weights for DQDs. The evaluated values of data sources were calculated by applying these different options of weights and are presented in Table 6 .

Weights of different options for metrics and DQDs

Evaluated values of data sources with weights added for metrics

The results in Table 6 show that WoS was ranked as the highest quality data source, by using either equal weights or weights derived from Wang and Strong (1996) .

In summary, this section presents the 10 metrics’ values of six relevant DQDs for evaluating bibliographic data sources. Five out of six dimensions (except for Accuracy ) reflect the significant differences ( p < 0.001) across the data sources under the survey. These differences show that there are more “better” results when the metrics were measured on WoS and Dimensions than on MAG. In addition, the dimensions’ values are significantly different ( p < 0.001) across disciplines. The metrics have no strong relationships with each other so they can be used in evaluating the bibliographic data sources. The evaluation shows that WoS received the highest scores for its fitness to use in IRC measurement. These results are discussed in the next section.

The goal of our investigation was to assess the quality of bibliographic data sources for measuring IRC. The main findings of this study were discussed around the research questions as follows:

6.1. Relevancy of Dimensions for IRC Measurement

RQ1 : Which dimensions are relevant to a DQA framework for IRC measurement?

With an inventory of possible dimensions identified from the literature review, we selected seven dimensions that we considered relevant to IRC measurement ( Accuracy , Appropriate amount of data , Completeness , Concise representation , Ease of Understanding , Relevancy , and Representational consistency ). Except for Relevancy , the other six ( Table S5 , ‘DQD’ column) among the seven dimensions selected were successfully operationalized by practical metrics. As they were selected specifically for the task of IRC measurement, this list of six dimensions was not identical to task-independent dimensions suggested by other studies, which required specific attributes from the data sources. For example, the framework of computable dimensions by Rajan, Gouripeddi et al. (2019) included the dimension Currency (also named Timeliness in some studies). This dimension required information about the average “out of date” values of data, which were not provided by the data sources under the survey. Another example is the list of dimensions selected specifically for Linked Open Data ( Zaveri et al., 2016 ). This list was selected to reflect the nature of linked data (e.g., the Availability dimension was measured with metrics involving the accessibility of the SPARQL endpoint and the server, and the accessibility of the RDF dumps). These metrics were not applicable for the task of IRC measurement because the SPARQL endpoint and RDF did not exist in bibliographic data. The above examples suggested that a specific set of metrics should be built for each task at hand.

To the best of our knowledge, our study was the first attempt to operationalize DQDs for IRC measurement. Previous studies about IRC measurement either ignored the reason why their data sources were chosen or chose particular data sources because these data were available during their studies. These practices implied that the findings in previous studies might vary differently according to which data sources were used in the studies ( Nguyen, Luczak-Roesch, & Dinneen, 2019 ). Another implication is that we have not known whether IRC-data-quality would be different from general-data-quality. The DQDs and their built-in metrics that we selected will help researchers in this specific domain to evaluate and determine the most suitable bibliographic data sources needed for future studies.

6.2. Meaningful Differences Among the DQDs

RQ2 : Which dimensions from the DQA framework reflect differences in the data from primary sources for IRC measurement?

We found five dimensions (except for Accuracy ) reflecting notable differences across data sources ( Completeness , Appropriate amount of data , Concise representation , EoU - Correct Spelling , and Representational consistency ). Each of the remaining dimensions was measured by metrics reflecting different aspects of that dimension on the data sources surveyed. For example, the Completeness dimension was evaluated with two metrics: Completeness - Property and Completeness - Population . Both metrics performed differently with a statistical significance of 0.001. These differences show that the data sources under study performed differently for the task at hand.

The exceptional dimension that did not reflect notable differences was Accuracy , which scored high (95%–99%) for the data sources in the survey, similar to the results of the study by Sinha et al. (2015) . This dimension was measured in the present study by its only metric—“the detection of malformed datatype”—because other possible metrics for Accuracy were either inapplicable or impractical in the context of IRC measurement (as presented in Table S5 ). This metric reflected the “free of error” status of the data sources and showed that all the data sources surveyed performed well at this aspect of Accuracy . The study might have shown different values of Accuracy across these data sources if other metrics had been applicable to measure the other aspects of Accuracy . In other words, the findings received in the current study might have been different if more metrics had been included successfully in the evaluation of the Accuracy dimension. As Accuracy was considered the key dimension of data quality ( Olensky, 2015 ), the inclusion of only one metric reflecting one aspect of this dimension may not fully express how accurate the data sources are. Although the approximate scores of Accuracy across the four bibliographic data sources implied that we could exclude this dimension from our DQA framework, we kept the DQA framework unchanged for general use because other data sources might show notable differences.

Among the four data sources, MAG had notably lower quality scores, while Dimensions and WoS had notably higher quality scores. The poor performance of MAG agrees with other studies about the quality of bibliographic data sources for tasks beyond IRC. For example, Huang, Neylon et al. (2020) showed that MAG, while having higher coverage for journals and conferences in comparison with WoS and Scopus, has “less complete affiliation metadata.” The lower scores of the dimensions Appropriate data (explicitly) and Consistency in MAG can also be explained by the fact MAG data set was built from web pages indexed by Bing ( Sinha et al., 2015 ). Consequently, many affiliations from these web pages may lack information about nationality or may not be correctly spelled. Because MAG is an openly available bibliographic data source for scientometrics, the use of this data source in IRC measurement studies has become widespread and this circumstance may lead to IRC measurement results of low quality. Therefore, researchers should be aware of and consider MAG’s weaknesses in choosing bibliographic data sources for their studies.

In contrast, the high scores of Dimensions and WoS can be explained by how these data sources organize the affiliation records. Dimensions and WoS both show notably high scores for Appropriate data (explicitly) and Concise representation - Compact Form of Time and Country Information . The differences are because Dimensions and WoS stored affiliations’ nationality and year information in a separate attribute, so their scores for Concise representation - Compact Form of Time and Country Information are higher in comparison with the scores of ACM DL and MAG. For Appropriate data (explicitly), Dimensions data are enriched with GRID—a global research identifier database ( Orduña-Malea & Delgado-López-Cózar, 2018 ). This data infrastructure allows assigning each institution to a persistent GRID identifier, so the number of name variants of each institution will be minimized. As a result, the ratio of explicit information about nationality in Dimensions affiliations can be further improved. WoS also scored the highest (100%) for Completeness - Property (M1). This result was unexpected because it was inconsistent with the result of Jacsó (2009) , which showed that 14% of WoS data was missing country information. However, WoS had low scores for EoU - Correct Spelling (M7) and Consistency - Standard (M9). These scores are low because many records of WoS were in uppercase and/or acronyms (e.g., “UNIV CALIF BERKELEY, DEPT GEOL & GEOPHYS”). Overall, the combined DQDs’ scores led to the highest rank of WoS (as presented in Table 6 ), which reflected the time and country disambiguation ability of WoS in comparison to other data sources. Another notable point is that WoS has a higher proportion of data points at the beginning of the period surveyed (1980–2017) than other data sources (shown in Figure 3 ). The difference may be because WoS was the commercial data source that came into operation earlier than other data sources. An implication here is that WoS may be more useful for research surveying IRC before the 1990s than other data sources.

It is also interesting to note that ACM, while scoring worst at Appropriate data (explicitly) , has a notably high score for Appropriate data (implicitly) . This finding is consistent with a previous study ( Nguyen, Dinneen, & Luczak-Roesch, 2019 ), which found that, in comparison with MAG, ACM DL has fewer affiliations containing explicit information about nationality. However, ACM DL also has a higher ratio of affiliations that can be disambiguated by applying string matching and Wikidata query ( Nguyen, Dinneen, & Luczak-Roesch, 2020 ). This high ratio of implicit information compensates for the low ratio of affiliations containing explicit nationality information.

Our study also suggests that the quality of a domain-specific data source depends on that domain’s nature (in Section 5.3.2 ). For the use of bibliographic data sources in general, other previous studies have also found that certain aspects differed across data sources, such as the average citation counts and the journal coverages ( Huang et al., 2020 ). Our study’s findings imply that the data bibliographic sources should be used for measuring IRC in domain-specific and multidisciplinary studies differently.

6.3. Results of Applying the Developed DQA Instrument

RQ3 : Which data source(s) is/are most suitable for measuring IRC?

By ranking the data sources surveyed using the combined measure, we successfully validated the developed DQA instrument for IRC measurement. This DQA instrument provides the baseline for researchers to use and develop in their study with regard to assessing the quality of data sources used to measure IRC.

As mentioned above, data quality is commonly defined as “fitness for use” ( Strong et al., 1997 ). For IRC measurement, we found that WoS is the most suitable choice among the data sources under the survey. However, the gap between the scores of WoS and the second highest quality data source (Dimensions) is quite small, as shown in Table 6 , and importantly, accessing WoS entails a fee whereas accessing Dimensions is free. Therefore, Dimensions may be the top choice if cost-effectiveness were to be considered, a possibility which we consider in our concluding remarks. For use in a wider context than IRC measurement, results from other studies analyzing other uses of bibliographic data sources showed inconsistent ranking outcomes of bibliographic data sources. For example, Visser, Van Eck, and Waltman (2021) concluded that Scopus and WoS outperformed Dimensions and MAG regarding the quality of citation links in these data sources, while Singh et al. (2021) found that Dimension had more unique journals than Scopus, and WoS had the least number in terms of the journal coverage. In general, the results of other studies vary according to their focuses, and we cannot compare these results with our findings because the focus of IRC measurement is on the existence and quality of “country” and “time” information in the bibliographic data sources.

As journal coverage was an important aspect in informing the comprehensiveness of data sources ( Martín-Martín et al., 2018 ), and significant differences in journal coverage were observed ( Singh et al., 2021 ), this aspect could be used as an additional criterion for choosing suitable data sources. We can consider a broader approach for data assessment in which data quality, measured by our developed DQ framework, reflects the qualitative aspect while the coverage reflects the quantitative aspect of any data source. Another possible consideration is to include the journal coverage, which presents the number of unique journals covered in each data source, in an extended DQA framework. Prior studies of DQA for bibliographic data have not considered this aspect. For example, Zaveri et al. (2016) only included “sufficient scope (number of entities) and detail (number of properties applied)” in a given data source as a coverage metric for the dimension Appropriate amount of data . However, journal coverage is important in IRC measurement studies because their results may be different if data sources having different journal coverage are used in the studies. Among data sources performing equally at time and country disambiguation, those including more unique journals per year will reflect the image of the IRC activities more accurately. Also, the IRC network has changed over time ( Wagner & Leydesdorff, 2005 ) so data sources covering a longer period of journals will give a more thorough image of the IRC activities. The present study assessed the fitness for use of the four data sources in a fixed period (1980–2017) because we did not have access to the whole coverage of all data sources under the survey. As journal coverage is important in IRC studies it can be further developed as another metric for IRC measurement.

6.4. Additional Findings

Beyond answering the posed research questions, our study revealed additional insights. First, we made a “metadata crosswalk” between the FRBR model and bibliographic data sources. We applied this approach to select the relevant attributes for IRC measurement, and then to select the DQDs that could be evaluated with these attributes. This approach was useful to assess the relevance of DQDs for IRC measurement, in the context that we could not consider the frequency ranking of DQDs in the literature because just a few prior studies were researching the DQDs of bibliographic data. We realized that, although the FRBR model has been applied to distinguish a work (e.g., research) from its manifestations (e.g., many publications of the same research) in bibliographic studies (e.g., Bar-Ilan, 2010 ; Moed, Bar-Ilan, & Halevi, 2016 ), no previous research has described the mapping of publication data sources’ attributes to FRBR model’s entities. As our implementation of the “metadata crosswalk” categorized the attributes of the four bibliographic data sources under survey into appropriate FRBR model’s entities, this map will also be useful for future studies in which researchers need to find references to make a publication-to-publication comparison or research-to-research comparison between these data sources. Second, a set of metrics was specifically proposed for IRC measurement. For example, we proposed the metric compact form of time and country information for the Concise representation dimension. Concise representation has been considered to be a subjective criterion in many prior studies (e.g., Caballero, Verbo et al., 2007 ; Naumann & Rolker, 2005 ), which means that the users’ judgment determines this dimension’s value. Our proposal is an attempt to determine the Concise representation dimension’s value by a quantification method not involving human judgment. In our study, the metric’s values for the Concise representation dimension varied across the data sources surveyed, and there were no relationships between this metric and the other dimensions’ metrics. In other words, our proposed metric for the Concise representation dimension reflected the differences among data sources, and it reflected a separate aspect from the other metrics. Overall, our proposed set of metrics provides a practical baseline for future IRC measurement studies, which can simply reuse or develop this metric set for their own tasks.

6.5. Implications for IRC Measurement

This study’s overall goal was to examine to what extent different bibliographic data sources are suited to measure IRC. We achieved it by steps, namely: There were seven particular DQDS found relevant for IRC measurement ( Accuracy , Appropriate amount of data , Completeness , Concise representation , Ease of Understanding , Relevancy , and Representational consistency ); of which six ( Table S5 , ‘DQD’ column) among the seven dimensions selected were successfully operationalized by practical metrics, five reflected differences in the data from primary sources for this task ( Completeness , Concise representation , Representational consistency , Appropriate amount of data , and Ease of Understanding ); and WoS is most suitable for measuring IRC.

Our study is critical because it contributes to understanding data quality for IRC measurement, which is a core but incomplete topic in IRC studies ( Chen et al., 2019 ). We finalized a list of dimensions relevant to the task of IRC measurement, showed how the dimensions selected can be implemented with objectively computable metrics, and showed how the data sources were ranked for the task of IRC measurement. Either the DQA framework suggested, the operationalization method described or the ranking list of data sources presented in the present study can be used by other researchers in their IRC measurement studies. In light of the FRBR structure, we showed that different bibliographic data sources were organized differently. With this approach, the differences in the performance of the data sources surveyed can then be comprehensively compared, and the strengths and weaknesses of the four data sources surveyed can be easily identified.

Our study implies a methodological contribution in general. DQA is a tricky task because of the subjectivity of various parts in the DQA framework. The selection of DQs can be very subjective and task specific. Therefore, the assessments of bibliographic data are often irreproducible in IRC studies because the methods for selecting DQs are not described clearly. Our methodological contribution can be considered in the wider context of data quality, not just bibliographic data quality.

Our study produces some useful implications for IRC measurement as well. First, we proposed a complete DQA framework for IRC measurement. Therefore, our work supplies a reference for further studies of IRC measurement to easily choose suitable bibliographic data sources for their tasks. Other researchers can simply apply our selected DQDs, which were considered relevant to IRC measurement, or apply our corresponding developed metrics to automatically evaluate the DQDs they choose. Otherwise, further IRC measurement studies have to review the literature themselves, select relevant DQDs, and build corresponding metrics for each DQD selected to compare the quality of different bibliographic data sources. All of these steps take time and, therefore, put a heavy burden on the task of IRC measurement. Second, we built and applied specific metrics for each DQDS to measure the data quality for IRC measurement. For each DQD, we built relevant measures and corresponding algorithms to evaluate the values of this DQD. The methods will be shared online so that future work can reuse and develop them in IRC studies. As no similar study has been done previously, the shared methods can greatly contribute to the bibliometric community’s development. Third, we proved that metrics result in different values across different data sources, depending on the data sources’ certain aspects (e.g., how that data source is organized, collected, and provided). Metrics also result in different values across a data source’s disciplines. In other words, the data quality of a domain-specific data source also depends on that domain’s nature. Our findings confirmed that bibliographic data sources have discipline bias (presented in Section 5.3.2 ). These findings suggested that our designed DQA can be applied for IRC measurement studies, but the results will vary across data sources’ subsets by discipline. Fourth, we proposed the “best” data source (among the four options reviewed) to measure IRC, either for just the domain of computing sciences or for all domains in general.

Our study has identified some potential but not fully explored aspects in considering the data quality for IRC measurement. There are some limitations, as follows.

The first limitation is linked to the approach used to design the DQA framework for IRC measurement. In this approach, we assessed the relevance of each DQD by considering how it could be meaningfully applied to measure IRC using the attributes found (i.e., time published and countries involved ) in the data sources surveyed. Consequently, the number of relevant DQDs selected was limited to only the DQDs that could be evaluated using the data sources surveyed. Some other DQDs would not have been excluded if the evaluations had been done with additional data sources. For example, information about the ranking of scientific journals can be used to access bibliographic data sources’ reputations, and the Reputation dimension can then be considered for the DQA framework for IRC measurement. This limited selection of DQDs might not fully reflect the quality of data sources for IRC measurement, because DQDs may be more or less relevant depending on the IRC measurement task and its ultimate purpose.

Rather than assume and design for a specialized measurement task, we have picked dimensions that appear widely applicable for what all IRC measurement tasks have in common: quantifying collaboration across international borders. Nonetheless, other quality dimensions not considered here might be very appropriate for more specialized tasks. For instance, interlinking data may be necessary to examine the structure of national higher education systems and their organizational characteristics or the relevant national policies ( Lepori, Barberio et al., 2013 ). For such a task, a DQD reflecting interlinking might be appropriate, especially to assess the ease or extent (i.e., possible ways) of combining data sources. Similarly, a DQD reflecting licensing might be relevant if the measurement task is concerned with the reusability of data and the reproducibility of the relevant publications. But these dimensions that may be useful for specific analyses are not easily measured via the approach we have proposed, which uses common kinds of bibliographic data and their related DQDs.

A possible improvement is assessing DQDs by not only how they can be applied in IRC measurement but also how they can be beneficial for IRC measurement in general. For instance, the assessment may include DQDs showing the ability to link to other data sources and, therefore, helping to check and improve the details of publications in one data source with data from another one. Another improvement is that the assessment may include DQDs that can be evaluated not just by the data source itself under investigation, but also by other data sources. For example, information about the extent to which the data source’s content is highly regarded can be referred to from other data sources not considered for the DQA framework.

Another limitation of our study is that we operationalized the data dimensions by applying only computable metrics, compared to subjective ones ( Rajan et al., 2019 ). Because not all metrics can be measured without human judgment, the number of metrics to measure each DQD was limited. Consequently, the evaluation for each of the dimensions in our DQA might not have reflected its definition properly as it should have done. One example is that the Accuracy dimension, although it implies various aspects (e.g., “correct, reliable, and certified free of error” by Wang & Strong [1996] ), could not be measured for either “correct” or “free of error” by computable metrics. It is possible that, despite our findings, accuracy is a meaningful differentiator for the different data sources, and that our metric for accuracy was simply too narrow to capture the difference; only one metric—“the detection of malformed datatype”—was implemented for the Accuracy dimension. However, this is currently the only practical way to implement the metric. Without some “ground truth” data or human verification (impractical), determining the accuracy of data remains an open problem that prevents us knowing with more certainty whether accuracy differs and affects IRC measurement. Another example is the operationalization of the Ease of Understanding dimension. This dimension has been considered a subjective criterion (i.e., this dimension’s value can only be determined by the users’ rating, Naumann & Rolker, 2005 ). Our study attempted to measure it with two metrics: Presence Relevant Vocabularies (M8) and Correct Spelling (M9). Although these two metrics might somehow be necessary for the data to be clear, they might not be sufficient to ensure that the data could be easily comprehended (e.g., affiliation “university school” might contain relevant vocabularies, with all of these words correctly spelled, but the combination of them make no sense to readers). Therefore, the values measured by these two metrics might not entirely reflect the quality of the Ease of Understanding dimension by definition.

In addition, our computable metrics may not work as thoroughly as expected. Because the computable metrics were implemented with the assistance of available R packages, there might be some circumstances in which these metrics could not accurately reflect reality. For instance, the metric correct spelling tried to recognize geographical names included in the affiliation data before checking whether these data are fully checked for spelling. The maps package was used for this purpose. Because this package’s database primarily includes world cities with a population greater than about 40,000, there is a possibility that some small towns or cities included in the affiliation data could not be identified by the metric correct spelling . Consequently, the metric correct spelling may wrongly evaluate some affiliations as incorrectly spelled if these affiliations include small towns or cities’ names.

Furthermore, the lack of human involvement in evaluating the importance of DQDs for IRC measurement is also a limitation. Instead of weighting the importance of DQDs by interviews or surveys, our study applied the results of Wang and Strong (1996) . In this study, they calculated the values indicating the importance of each DQD from data consumers’ opinions. As the study by Wang and Strong was carried out many years ago, and the participants were data consumers in general, this study’s results may not serve well for researchers in the IRC measurement domain at present. Although our approach simplified the burden of work involved, it is not the best way to get findings that could have been derived with the support of work from IRC measurement experts. Therefore, the application of our DQA might be less effective than that of a fully integrated DQA with evaluations by relevant humans.

Finally, the selection of data sources surveyed in this study is another limitation. Our study surveyed the data quality of two commercial bibliographic data sources (Dimensions and WoS), one open data source (MAG), and one specific domain data source (ACM DL). Although representing different types of bibliographic data sources, these four data sources do not cover all of the possible common data sources used in scientometrics. For example, we did not have access to Scopus and PubMed copies, which are also two important and commonly used sources for IRC measurement, so they were not included in this present study. As a result, our recommendations for bibliographic data sources could not be applied to the missing ones, and our study’s application was limited to only the data sources surveyed.

In conclusion, our study aimed to find how well different bibliographic data sources are suited to measure international research collaboration and which dimensions (DQDs) of such sources are important in determining their suitability. Our work identified relevant DQDs from data quality literature and implemented corresponding computable metrics to build a framework for assessing data quality for IRC measurement. The designed instrument was then validated by applying it to four important bibliographic data sources. On the three multidisciplinary bibliographic data sources—Dimensions, MAG, and WoS—this application revealed that the measure of DQA depends on the nature of each discipline. Our findings also suggested WoS as the highest quality data source for IRC measurement studies. We also recommended the use of the second highest quality data source—Dimensions—if cost-effectiveness is considered. Our study filled the lack of DQA in IRC measurement by proposing a DQA framework for this task. In addition, the implementation of relevant DQDs in our study is shared online so that other researchers will be able to use them in future studies.

For future work, some further developments can be carried out. Currently, we list seven DQDs as relevant to IRC measurement (by assessing how they can be applied in IRC measurement), in which six DQDs were operationalized (by applying only computable metrics). These DQDs were just a part of 15 dimensions in the conceptual framework of information quality proposed by Wang and Strong (1996) . Consequently, some aspects of data quality were not considered in our study. Other studies in the future could examine some other dimensions to cover other aspects of data quality and better evaluate data quality for IRC measurement. One example is the Reputation dimension. By definition, Reputation implies two aspects ( Wang & Strong, 1996 ). The first aspect is the Reputation of the data source . The implementation for this aspect needs a combination with other data source(s). For example, reputation scores about the data sources (Dimensions, MAG …) from other studies, or at least reputation scores of lists of journals stored in the data sources should be available and used to calculate this dimension. The second aspect is the Reputation of the data content . This aspect can be calculated using some available attributes in the data sources. For example, information about each article’s impact can be used as a baseline for that article’s reputation. However, the implementation is somewhat complicated and this approach will introduce bias to the evaluation, as not all citations are endorsements, and the average citations in different disciplines are different ( Huang et al., 2020 ). Another dimension that could be considered, for instance, is the Interlinking dimension. Interlinking was considered an additional dimension to the Accessibility category in Wang and Strong’s framework ( Candela, Escobar et al., 2021 ; Zaveri et al., 2016 ). The implementation of this dimension in further studies could be done by detecting the existence of links to external data providers ( Zaveri et al., 2016 ). The fact that information from bibliographic data sources (i.e., the discrete records) is not alone exhaustive of DQA suggests a need to standardize these metadata sources. Other potentially important aspects of sources, such as those attributable to the publishing industry (e.g., standard reports, or version control for the data), should also be encouraged as a means for the standardization of bibliographic data and their quality.

Human opinions will be used for both measuring the DQDs and weighting them in future work. For example, researchers in the domain of IRC measurement will be asked for their evaluations about how well each DQD performs on each data source, and how vital each DQD should be in the DQA framework. As the DQDs will be evaluated not only by computable metrics but also by other metrics with inputs from these experts, the results received in the evaluation will follow the definitions of these DQDs better. In addition, researchers’ opinions in the domain of IRC measurement will be used to determine the weight of each DQD in the DQA framework. In total, the inclusion of both qualitative and quantitative assessments will help to increase the reliability of our DQA framework for IRC measurement.

Another area for future improvement is to develop the DQA framework into a data source evaluation framework with the inclusion of a measure for cost-effectiveness . As different data sources have different access fees (e.g., WoS has a fee to access it, whereas Dimensions does not), the opportunities for access are not the same for all researchers and institutions. Therefore, cost-effectiveness is likely an important criterion in the process of choosing data sources and should be included in a framework in future studies.

Our DQA framework will also be used to assess other bibliography data sources. As Scopus, PubMed, Crossref, and OpenCitations are the other major bibliographic data sources in quantitative science studies ( Waltman & Larivière, 2020 ), these data sources will be considered to be included in our further study. From the recommendations of this future work, the researchers in the domain of IRC measurement will be able to assess and choose suitable bibliographic data sources for their studies.

Finally, the use of only joint research publications in IRC measurement has limitations because there are various types of outcomes as well, such as patents and joint research grants ( Yuan, Hao et al., 2018 ). Therefore, the need to assess these relevant data sources’ quality for measuring IRC will also be carried out in the future.

Ba Xuan Nguyen: Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Software, Validation, Visualization, Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing. Markus Luczak-Roesch: Conceptualization, Methodology, Resources, Supervision, Writing—review & editing. Jesse David Dinneen: Conceptualization, Methodology, Resources, Supervision, Writing—review & editing. Vincent Larivière: Data curation, Resources, Writing—review & editing.

The authors have no competing interests.

No funding has been received for this work.

The data sets (ACM DL, Dimensions, WoS) used for analyses in the current study are not publicly available due to confidentiality clauses.

The data set MAG can be accessed at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/open-academic-graph/ .

The source code and data generated during the current study are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7016728 ( Nguyen, Luczak-Roesch et al., 2022 ).

MAG data were downloaded as a part of OAG v1, which was publicly available from mid-2017 ( https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/open-academic-graph/ ).

Dimensions data were downloaded via Dimensions API in April 2020 ( https://app.dimensions.ai/api/auth ).

ACM DL data were retrieved by FTP download in March 2019 ( ftp://pubftp.acm.org ).

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A publication of the harvard college writing program.

Harvard Guide to Using Sources 

• The Honor Code
• Bibliography

If you are using Chicago style footnotes or endnotes, you should include a bibliography at the end of your paper that provides complete citation information for all of the sources you cite in your paper. Bibliography entries are formatted differently from notes. For bibliography entries, you list the sources alphabetically by last name, so you will list the last name of the author or creator first in each entry. You should single-space within a bibliography entry and double-space between them. When an entry goes longer than one line, use a hanging indent of .5 inches for subsequent lines. Here’s a link to a sample bibliography that shows layout and spacing . You can find a sample of note format here .

Complete note vs. shortened note

Here’s an example of a complete note and a shortened version of a note for a book:

1. Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), 27-35.

1. Karen Ho, Liquidated , 27-35.

Note vs. Bibliography entry

The bibliography entry that corresponds with each note is very similar to the longer version of the note, except that the author’s last and first name are reversed in the bibliography entry. To see differences between note and bibliography entries for different types of sources, check this section of the Chicago Manual of Style .

For Liquidated , the bibliography entry would look like this:

Ho, Karen, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street . Durham: Duke University Press, 2009.

Citing a source with two or three authors

If you are citing a source with two or three authors, list their names in your note in the order they appear in the original source. In the bibliography, invert only the name of the first author and use “and” before the last named author.

1. Melissa Borja and Jacob Gibson, “Internationalism with Evangelical Characteristics: The Case of Evangelical Responses to Southeast Asian Refugees,” The Review of Faith & International Affairs 17, no. 3 (2019): 80-81, https://doi.org/10.1080/15570274.2019.1643983 .

Shortened note:

1. Borja and Gibson, “Internationalism with Evangelical Characteristics,” 80-81.

Bibliography:

Borja, Melissa, and Jacob Gibson. “Internationalism with Evangelical Characteristics: The Case of Evangelical Responses to Southeast Asian Refugees.” The Review of Faith & International Affairs 17. no. 3 (2019): 80–93. https://doi.org/10.1080/15570274.2019.1643983 .

Citing a source with more than three authors

If you are citing a source with more than three authors, include all of them in the bibliography, but only include the first one in the note, followed by et al. ( et al. is the shortened form of the Latin et alia , which means “and others”).

1. Justine M. Nagurney, et al., “Risk Factors for Disability After Emergency Department Discharge in Older Adults,” Academic Emergency Medicine 27, no. 12 (2020): 1271.

Short version of note:

1. Justine M. Nagurney, et al., “Risk Factors for Disability,” 1271.

Nagurney, Justine M., Ling Han, Linda Leo‐Summers, Heather G. Allore, Thomas M. Gill, and Ula Hwang. “Risk Factors for Disability After Emergency Department Discharge in Older Adults.” Academic Emergency Medicine 27, no. 12 (2020): 1270–78. https://doi.org/10.1111/acem.14088 .

Citing a book consulted online

If you are citing a book you consulted online, you should include a URL, DOI, or the name of the database where you found the book.

1. Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), 27-35, https://doi-org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/10.1215/9780822391371 .

Bibliography entry:

Ho, Karen. Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street . Durham: Duke University Press, 2009. https://doi-org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/10.1215/9780822391371 .

Citing an e-book consulted outside of a database

If you are citing an e-book that you accessed outside of a database, you should indicate the format. If you read the book in a format without fixed page numbers (like Kindle, for example), you should not include the page numbers that you saw as you read. Instead, include chapter or section numbers, if possible.

1. Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), chap. 2, Kindle.

Ho, Karen. Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street . Durham: Duke University Press, 2009. Kindle.

• Citation Management Tools
• In-Text Citations
• Examples of Commonly Cited Sources
• Frequently Asked Questions about Citing Sources in Chicago Format
• Sample Bibliography

PDFs for This Section

• Citing Sources
• Online Library and Citation Tools

• Park University
• Tools for Academic Writing
• Annotated Bibliography

Tools for Academic Writing: Annotated Bibliography

• URL: https://library.park.edu/writing
• Literature Review
• Writing in Your Discipline This link opens in a new window
• Giving Peer Feedback
• Citing & Plagiarism This link opens in a new window
• Individual Help This link opens in a new window
• Careers & Job Hunting
• Writing Tutoring

Chicago Style

• Rosen Research Guides 7th Style Annotated Bibliography

• CSUN University Library MLA 9th Annotated Bibliography

• CSUN Unversity Library APA 7th ed Annotated Bibliography

Writing an Annotated Bibliography 

APA/MLA Annotated Bibliography 

Writing an Annotated Bibliography

In an annotated bibliography, there are two main parts: the bibliography and the annotations.

For the  bibliography , you will first need to determine what citation style is most appropriate to cite the bibliographic information for your sources. 

There are also several different types of  annotations  to choose from when writing your annotated bibliography. Here are some basic types of annotation styles:

Summary annotations There are two kinds of summarizing annotations, informative and indicative.

Summarizing annotations in general have a couple of defining features:

• They sum up the content of the source, as a book report might.
• They give an overview of the arguments and proofs/evidence addressed in the work and note the resulting conclusion.
• They do not judge the work they are discussing. Leave that to the critical/evaluative annotations.
• When appropriate, they describe the author’s methodology or approach to material. For instance, you might mention if the source is an ethnography or if the author employs a particular kind of theory.

Informative annotation Informative annotations sometimes read like straight summaries of the source material, but they often spend a little more time summarizing relevant information about the author or the work itself.

Indicative annotation Indicative annotation is the second type of summary annotation, but it does not attempt to include actual information from the argument itself. Instead, it gives general information about what kinds of questions or issues are addressed by the work. This sometimes includes the use of chapter titles.

Critical/Evaluative Evaluative annotations don’t just summarize. In addition to tackling the points addressed in summary annotations, evaluative annotations:

• evaluate the source or author critically (biases, lack of evidence, objective, etc.).
• show how the work may or may not be useful for a particular field of study or audience.
• explain how researching this material assisted your own project.

Combination An annotated bibliography may combine elements of all the types. In fact, most of them fall into this category: a little summarizing and describing, a little evaluation.

Steps to Writing the Annotation 

The  RADAR Framework  can help you remember what kinds of questions you should be asking about an information source as you evaluate it for quality and usefulness in your research.

Step 1: Cite the source properly.

Step 2. Use RADAR: Relevance to explain how this source is related to your topic. Does it answer your research question? What does it add to your research so far?

Step 3. Use RADAR: Rationale to explain who the audience is for this source. What sort of language is used to talk about the topic? 

Step 4. Use RADAR: Authority to talk about the author's credentials, affiliation, and relationship to the discipline or topic discussed in the source. 

Step 5. Use RADAR: Accuracy to state whether other experts of scholars support this source's claims or not. Is there a shared expert opinion on this source? 

Step 6. Use RADAR: Rationale to state whether the source presents obvious bias. Are they implying something not backed by evidence? Do they make statements not clearly linked to the evidence or data presented? 

• RADAR Handout

Evaluative Annotated Bibliography Tutorial 

Reading a Scholarly Article

A scholarly paper can be difficult to read. Instead of reading straight through, try focusing on the different sections and asking specific questions at each point.

What is your research question? 

When you select an article to read for a project or class, focus on your topic. Look for information in the article that is relevant to your research question. 

Read the abstract first  as it covers basics of the article. Questions to consider: 

• What is this article about? What is the working hypothesis or thesis?
• Is this related to my question or area of research?

Second: Read the introduction and discussion/conclusion.  These sections offer the main argument and hypothesis of the article. Questions to consider for the introduction: 

• What do we already know about this topic and what is left to discover?
• What have other people done in regards to this topic?
• How is this research unique?
• Will this tell me anything new related to my research question?

Questions for the discussion and conclusion: 

• What does the study mean and why is it important?
• What are the weaknesses in their argument?
• Is the conclusion valid?

Next: Read about the Methods/Methodology.  If what you've read addresses your research question, this should be your next section. Questions to consider:

• How did the author do the research? Is it a qualitative or quantitative project?
• What data are the study based on?
• Could I repeat their work? Is all the information present in order to repeat it?

Finally: Read the Results and Analysis.  Now read the details of this research. What did the researchers learn? If graphs and statistics are confusing, focus on the explanations around them. Questions to consider: 

• What did the author find and how did they find it?
• Are the results presented in a factual and unbiased way?
• Does their analysis agree with the data presented?
• Is all the data present?
• What conclusions do you formulate from this data? (And does it match with the Author's conclusions?)

Review the References (anytime):  These give credit to other scientists and researchers and show you the basis the authors used to develop their research.  The list of references, or works cited, should include all of the materials the authors used in the article. The references list can be a good way to identify additional sources of information on the topic. Questions to ask:

• What other articles should I read?
• What other authors are respected in this field?
• What other research should I explore?

From USC Libraries Evaluating Information Sources: Reading Scholarly Articles Guide

Helpful Links for Annotated Bibliographies

• Annotated Bibliography Sample from Purdue OWL
• Informative and Critical Annotation Sample
• Indicative, Informative, Evaluative and Combination Annotation Sample
• The UNC-Chapel Hill Annotated Bibliography Handout
• Note Taking For Annotated Bibliographies

Elements in an Annotated Bibliography

• Bibliography according to the appropriate citation style (MLA, APA, CBE/CSE, etc.).
• Explanation of main points and/or purpose of the work—basically, its thesis—which shows among other things that you have read and thoroughly understand the source.
• Verification or critique of the authority or qualifications of the author.
• Comments on the worth, effectiveness, and usefulness of the work in terms of both the topic being researched and/or your own research project.
• The point of view or perspective from which the work was written. For instance, you may note whether the author seemed to have particular biases or was trying to reach a particular audience.
• Relevant links to other work done in the area, like related sources, possibly including a comparison with some of those already on your list. You may want to establish connections to other aspects of the same argument or opposing views.

Annotations vs. Abstracts

Abstracts are the purely descriptive summaries often found at the beginning of scholarly journal articles or in periodical indexes. Annotations are descriptive and critical; they may describe the author's point of view, authority, or clarity and appropriateness of expression.

How to Read a Scholarly Article

• Anatomy of a Scholarly Article Tutorial Not sure where to start when reading a scholarly article? Check out this tutorial!
• Guide to Scholarly Articles This research guide provides in-depth information on reading articles and writing summaries of them for your annotated bibliographies!
• << Previous: Literature Review
• Next: Writing in Your Discipline >>
• Last Updated: Jan 23, 2024 12:57 PM

• Cambridge Dictionary +Plus

Meaning of bibliographic in English

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• This will allow researchers to capture bibliographic references for citing in papers and reports that they write.
• Keywords can be searched in English or French with full bibliographic citations .
• User access to the library's bibliographic data is currently by means of a card catalog .
• The database is a large collection of bibliographic records and location holdings for the worldwide network of libraries .
• This is the world's largest database of bibliographic information .
• acknowledgment
• acknowledgments phrase
• bibliographical
• bibliographically
• concordance
• non-biographical

You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Examples of bibliographic

Word of the Day

a bitter pill (to swallow)

something that is very unpleasant but must be accepted

Sitting on the fence (Newspaper idioms)

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