Glossary of Library and Information Science - C

C

• call number - an identification marker used in libraries to categorize and locate books and other resources. Each resource is assigned a combination of letters and numbers which correspond with a location in the library. For example the call number for the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association is BF76.7 .P83 2001.

• catalog (or catalogue) - a complete and systematically organized enumeration of items, particularly the complete enumeration of a libraries' resources on a set of paper cards (card catalog) or in an electronic database (bibliographic database).

• citation - the quoting or mentioning of a source. All works used in preparing a paper should be cited.

• citation search - a search, by name, of all references to an individual. Some databases have a specific citation search option, otherwise you use a full-text search. For an example of a database that has a specific citation search option go to the University of Michigan Library Database.

• Community analysis - the analysis of a set of people. Such analyses enable librarians to know the needs of patrons and hopefully provide better services to them. In a city library district, the set of relevant people would be all those who live in the city or those people eligible to use the library. Analysis may also be restricted to a subset of eligible library users.

• controlled vocabulary - limiting searches to the exact subject headings contained in the Library of Congress. An example would be "History - Bibliography etc". Some indexes, like Wilson Indexes, have their own system of headings and hence their own controlled vocabulary.

• copyright - the legal right granted to a copyright holder for the exclusive sale, distribution or reproduction of a creative work. It is a form of intellectual property that prevents others from using a creative work without consent of the owner. For example, Thomas Mann holds the copyright on the book The Oxford Guide to Library Research.

• cross reference database - a collection of records that have one or more fields that reference other related records. These connections (for example between "marketing" and "promotion") make browsing very productive and allow related-items searches.