Welcome to the library research guide for POLS 498: Senior Seminar (Politics of Sports). This guide is intended to serve as a "one-stop-shop" for your research needs in this class, but be sure to also use the Foley website.
Use the menu to the left to find useful stuff. If you have any questions, direct them to that good-looking librarian you see to the lower left on this page.
Abstract: A summary or brief description of the content of another longer work. An abstract is often provided along with the citation to a work.
Article: A brief work—generally between 1 and 35 pages in length—on a topic. Often published as part of a journal, magazine, or newspaper.
Boolean operator: A word—such as AND, OR, or NOT—that commands a computer to combine search terms. Helps to narrow (AND, NOT) or broaden (OR) searches.
Call number: A group of letters and/or numbers that identifies a specific item in a library and provides a way for organizing library holdings. Three major types of call numbers are Dewey Decimal, Library of Congress, and Superintendent of Documents.
Catalog: A database (either online or on paper cards) listing and describing the books, journals, government documents, audiovisual and other materials held by a library. Various search terms allow you to look for items in the catalog.
Citation: A reference to a book, magazine or journal article, or other work containing all the information necessary to identify and locate that work. A citation to a book includes its author's name, title, publisher and place of publication, and date of publication.
Database: A collection of information stored in an electronic format that can be searched by a computer.
DOI: Acronym for Digital Object Identifier. It is a unique alphanumeric string assigned by the publisher to a digital object.
Interlibrary services/loan: A service that allows you to borrow materials from other libraries through your own library.
Journal: A publication, issued on a regular basis, which contains scholarly research published as articles, papers, research reports, or technical reports.
Keyword: A significant or memorable word or term in the title, abstract, or text of an information resource that indicates its topic and is often used as a search term.
Magazine: A publication, issued on a regular basis, containing popular articles, written and illustrated in a less technical manner than the articles found in a journal.
Newspaper: A publication containing information about varied topics that are pertinent to general information, a geographic area, or a specific subject matter (i.e. business, culture, education). Often published daily.
Peer-reviewed journal: Peer review is a process by which editors have experts in a field review books or articles submitted for publication by the experts’ peers. Peer review helps to ensure the quality of an information source. A peer-reviewed journal is also called a refereed journal or scholarly journal.
Permalink: A link that will return you to the same page every time you click the link, regardless of time passed or proxy settings.
Primary source: An original record of events, such as a diary, a newspaper article, a public record, or scientific documentation.
Proxy server: An Internet server that acts as a “go-between” for a computer on a local network (secure system) and the open Web. Often checks to determine “right of access” to the secure environment and speeds up requests by caching frequently accessed Web pages. Can also act as a firewall.
Secondary sources: Materials such as books and journal articles that analyze primary sources. Secondary sources usually provide evaluation or interpretation of data or evidence found in original research or documents such as historical manuscripts or memoirs.
Stacks: Shelves in the library where materials—typically books—are stored. Books in the stacks are normally arranged by call number. May be referred to as “book stacks.”
Subject heading: Human-created descriptions of an information source’s content assigned (also by humans) to make finding information easier.
Uniform Resource Locator (URL): The unique address for a Web page which is used in citing it. A URL consists of the access protocol (http), the domain name (www.nmsu.edu), and often the path to a file or resource residing on that server. Bet you didn’t know what URL stood for! (Neither did I.)
*All definitions are from the "Multilingual Glossary for Today's Library Users" by the Association of College and Research Libraries-Instruction Section (2018), and are used under a CC-BY-NC license.
