RESOURCE CENTRE MANUAL
HEALTHLINK WORLDWIDE
Publisher's catalogue
A list of currently available publications.
Record
Section of a computer database equivalent to a card in a catalogue. Each record
contains all the information about a particular material. Records are made up
of fields.
Reference book
A book, such as an encyclopaedia or a dictionary, used to obtain specific
information.
Reference material
Books, videos and other materials that may be used in the resource centre –
they may not be borrowed.
Reference interview
Discussion with a user to find out their information needs, including subject
areas, format of materials (such as book, articles, video), content of materials
(such as audience level), what they want to use the materials for, and so on.
Repackaging information
Re-issuing material in different ways to meet the needs of different groups.
Repeatable field
A field within a database that can be repeated – for example, for multiple
authors or keywords.
RTF (rich text file)
Format of a word-processed document which contains text only, but includes
basic formatting such as bold and underline. An RTF file can be read by most
word-processing programs and is given the file extension .RTF (for example,
REPORT.RTF)
Scope note
A note on the meaning of a keyword and how it should be used.
SDI (selective dissemination of information)
Notifying individual users about materials that will interest them.
Search
See ‘Database search’ or ‘Literature search’.
Search engine or search directory
A tool that helps viewers to find information on the World Wide Web. A
search engine can search for a word or combination of words appearing on
web pages and displays the addresses of these pages.
8 DEFINITIONS