A bibliographic database is a

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...

bibliographic record A bibliographic record is an entry in a bibliographic index (or a library catalog) which represents and describes a specific resource. A bibliographic record contains the data elements necessary to help users identify and retrieve that resource, as ...

s. This is an organised online collection of references to published written works like journal and

newspaper A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as poli ...

articles, conference

proceedings In academia and librarianship, conference proceedings are a collection of academic papers published in the context of an academic conference or workshop. Conference proceedings typically contain the contributions made by researchers at the confer ...

, reports, government and legal publications,

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

s and

book A book is a structured presentation of recorded information, primarily verbal and graphical, through a medium. Originally physical, electronic books and audiobooks are now existent. Physical books are objects that contain printed material, ...

s. In contrast to

library catalog A library catalog (or library catalogue in British English) is a register of all bibliography, bibliographic items found in a library or group of libraries, such as a network of libraries at several locations. A catalog for a group of libra ...

ue entries, a majority of the records in bibliographic databases describe articles and conference papers rather than complete monographs, and they generally contain very rich subject descriptions in the form of keywords, subject classification terms, or abstracts. A bibliographic database may cover a wide range of topics or one academic field like

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

. A significant number of bibliographic databases are marketed under a trade name by licensing agreement from vendors, or directly from their makers: the

indexing and abstracting service An abstracting service is a service that provides abstracts of publications, often on a subject or group of related subjects, usually on a subscription basis. An indexing service is a service that assigns descriptors and other kinds of access po ...

s. Many bibliographic databases have evolved into digital libraries, providing the full text of the organised contents:for instance CORE also organises and mirrors scholarly articles and OurResearch develops a search engine for

open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...

content in Unpaywall. Others merge with non-bibliographic and scholarly databases to create more complete disciplinary

search engine A search engine is a software system that provides hyperlinks to web pages, and other relevant information on World Wide Web, the Web in response to a user's web query, query. The user enters a query in a web browser or a mobile app, and the sea ...

systems, such as Chemical Abstracts or Entrez.

History

Prior to the mid-20th century, individuals searching for published literature had to rely on printed

bibliographic index A bibliographic index is a bibliography intended to help find a publication. Citations are usually listed by author and subject in separate sections, or in a single alphabetical sequence under a system of authorized headings collectively known as ...

es, generated manually from

index card An index card (or record card in British English and system cards in Australian English) consists of card stock (heavy paper) cut to a standard size, used for recording and storing small amounts of discrete data. A collection of such cards ei ...

During the early 1960s computers were used to digitize text for the first time; the purpose was to reduce the cost and time required to publish two American abstracting journals, the '' Index Medicus'' of the National Library of Medicine and the '' Scientific and Technical Aerospace Reports'' of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). By the late 1960s, such bodies of digitized alphanumeric information, known as bibliographic and numeric databases, constituted a new type of information resource. Online interactive retrieval became commercially viable in the early 1970s over private telecommunications networks. The first services offered a few databases of indexes and abstracts of scholarly literature. These databases contained bibliographic descriptions of journal articles that were searchable by keywords in author and title, and sometimes by journal name or subject heading. The user interfaces were crude, the access was expensive, and searching was done by librarians on behalf of "end users".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bibliographic Database Information science Library 2.0

History

See also

References