Sport & Recreation Management

What does it mean? Decoding library jargon

You might see these words mentioned on this guide, or used by your professors:

Liaison librarian = An expert researcher in the subject area who can be consulted for course projects. 

Article = A piece of writing included with others in a newspaper, magazine, journal or other publication. Which MBAs make more? is an article from the magazine Harvard Business Review. 

Research databases = Search interfaces that enable library users to find articles from journals and magazines. This infographic explains the relationship between articles, journals and databases. 

Peer-reviewed journals = Scholarly publications in which articles are approved by other specialists in the field before they are printed. Many library databases allow you to filter results to see only peer-reviewed articles. This infographic explains the peer-review process.

JMU Library Catalog = Search the print books, e-books, films, etc., that you can access as a JMU student.

Interlibrary loan (ILL) = Request materials that JMU doesn't own (such as books, articles or films). These are loaned from other libraries and usually have no cost to the student.

Off-campus access = JMU pays for you to have access to highly specialized research databases. Therefore you must have a JMU e-ID and password to access them. Instructions to use library resources off-campus.