When you need information, where do you go?

Your choice of an information source will influence the kind of

information you retrieve. Consider the specific attributes of information sources before you make your choice!

Information Primary
Advantage Disadvantage
Source Attribute

Information may be out of date,

Book
Comprehensive Substantive depending on the date of the book's
(non-fiction)
publication.

Because of a limited amount of space,

Popular Focused coverage is limited to only most current
Magazine
information.

Because of a limited amount of space,

Scholarly Authoritative coverage is limited to only most current
Journal
information.

Broad in
Newspaper Current Non-substantive
scope

World Wide
Broad in
Web Accessible Unreliable
scope
(Internet)

Journal (disambiguation)

Journal may refer to:

• a written medium, for instance:

o an academic journal
o a diary
o a literary magazine, a periodical devoted to literature
o a daily newspaper
o a scientific journal

• Journal (computing), a chronological record of data processing

• Journal (mechanical device), the section of a rotating shaft that contacts and turns in a bearing
• Mining journal, a record systematically describing the strata through which a mine shaft passes (see shaft
mining)
• Journal entry, an accounting transaction in the double-entry bookkeeping system
• A part of a plain bearing
• Journals (Cobain), a collection of writings by Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, published in 2002

Abstract (summary)

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An abstract is a brief summary of a research article, thesis, review, conference proceeding or any in-depth analysis
of a particular subject or discipline, and is often used to help the reader quickly ascertain the paper's purpose. When
used, an abstract always appears at the beginning of a manuscript, acting as the point-of-entry for any given
scientific paper or patent application. Abstraction and indexing services are available for a number of academic
disciplines, aimed at compiling a body of literature for that particular subject.

Abstract

Because on-line search databases typically contain only abstracts, it is vital to write a complete but concise
description of your work to entice potential readers into obtaining a copy of the full paper. This article describes
how to write a good computer architecture abstract for both conference and journal papers. Writers should follow a
checklist consisting of: motivation, problem statement, approach, results, and conclusions. Following this checklist
should increase the chance of people taking the time to obtain and read your complete paper.

Introduction

Now that the use of on-line publication databases is prevalent, writing a really good abstract has become even more
important than it was a decade ago. Abstracts have always served the function of "selling" your work. But now,
instead of merely convincing the reader to keep reading the rest of the attached paper, an abstract must convince the
reader to leave the comfort of an office and go hunt down a copy of the article from a library (or worse, obtain one
after a long wait through inter-library loan). In a business context, an "executive summary" is often the only piece of
a report read by the people who matter; and it should be similar in content if not tone to a journal paper abstract.

Checklist: Parts of an Abstract

Despite the fact that an abstract is quite brief, it must do almost as much work as the multi-page paper that follows
it. In a computer architecture paper, this means that it should in most cases include the following sections. Each
section is typically a single sentence, although there is room for creativity. In particular, the parts may be merged or
spread among a set of sentences. Use the following as a checklist for your next abstract:

• Motivation:
Why do we care about the problem and the results? If the problem isn't obviously "interesting" it might be
better to put motivation first; but if your work is incremental progress on a problem that is widely
recognized as important, then it is probably better to put the problem statement first to indicate which piece
of the larger problem you are breaking off to work on. This section should include the importance of your
work, the difficulty of the area, and the impact it might have if successful.
• Problem statement:
What problem are you trying to solve? What is the scope of your work (a generalized approach, or for a
specific situation)? Be careful not to use too much jargon. In some cases it is appropriate to put the problem
statement before the motivation, but usually this only works if most readers already understand why the
problem is important.
• Approach:
How did you go about solving or making progress on the problem? Did you use simulation, analytic
models, prototype construction, or analysis of field data for an actual product? What was the extent of your
work (did you look at one application program or a hundred programs in twenty different programming
languages?) What important variables did you control, ignore, or measure?
• Results:
What's the answer? Specifically, most good computer architecture papers conclude that something is so
many percent faster, cheaper, smaller, or otherwise better than something else. Put the result there, in
numbers. Avoid vague, hand-waving results such as "very", "small", or "significant." If you must be vague,
you are only given license to do so when you can talk about orders-of-magnitude improvement. There is a
 tension here in that you should not provide numbers that can be easily misinterpreted, but on the other hand
you don't have room for all the caveats.
• Conclusions:
What are the implications of your answer? Is it going to change the world (unlikely), be a significant "win",
be a nice hack, or simply serve as a road sign indicating that this path is a waste of time (all of the previous
results are useful). Are your results general, potentially generalizable, or specific to a particular case?

Abstracts

This handout provides definitions and examples of the two main types of abstracts: descriptive and informative. It
also provides guidelines for constructing an abstract and general tips for you to keep in mind when drafting. Finally,
it includes a few examples of abstracts broken down into their component parts.

What is an abstract?

An abstract is a self-contained, short, and powerful statement that describes a larger work. Components vary
according to discipline; an abstract of a social science or scientific work may contain the scope, purpose, results, and
contents of the work. An abstract of a humanities work may contain the thesis, background, and conclusion of the
larger work. An abstract is not a review, nor does it evaluate the work being abstracted. While it contains key words
found in the larger work, the abstract is an original document rather than an excerpted passage.

top

Why write an abstract?

You may write an abstract for various reasons. The two most important are selection and indexing. Abstracts allow
readers who may be interested in a longer work to quickly decide whether it is worth their time to read it. Also,
many online databases use abstracts to index larger works. Therefore, abstracts should contain keywords and phrases
that allow for easy searching.

Types of abstracts

There are two types of abstracts: descriptive and informative. They have different aims, so as a consequence they
have different components and styles. There is also a third type called critical, but it is rarely used. If you want to
find out more about writing a critique or a review of a work, see the UNC Writing Center handout on writing a
review. If you are unsure which type of abstract you should write, ask your instructor (if the abstract is for a class) or
read other abstracts in your field or in the journal where you are submitting your article.

Descriptive abstracts

A descriptive abstract indicates the type of information found in the work. It makes no judgments about the work,
nor does it provide results or conclusions of the research. It does incorporate key words found in the text and may
include the purpose, methods, and scope of the research. Essentially, the descriptive abstract describes the work
being abstracted. Some people consider it an outline of the work, rather than a summary. Descriptive abstracts are
usually very short—100 words or less.

Informative abstracts

The majority of abstracts are informative. While they still do not critique or evaluate a work, they do more than
describe it. A good informative abstract acts as a surrogate for the work itself. That is, the writer presents and
explains all the main arguments and the important results and evidence in the complete article/paper/book. An
informative abstract includes the information that can be found in a descriptive abstract (purpose, methods, scope)
but also includes the results and conclusions of the research and the recommendations of the author. The length
varies according to discipline, but an informative abstract is rarely more than 10% of the length of the entire work.
In the case of a longer work, it may be much less.

A review is an evaluation of a publication, such as a movie (a movie review), video game, musical composition
(music review of a composition or recording), book (book review); a piece of hardware like a car, home appliance,
or computer; or an event or performance, such as a live music concert,a play, musical theater show or dance show.
In addition to a critical evaluation, the review's author may assign the work a rating to indicate its relative merit.
More loosely, an author may review current events, trends, or items in the news. A compilation of reviews may itself
be called a review. The New York Review of Books, for instance, is a collection of essays on literature, culture, and
current affairs. National Review, founded by William F. Buckley, Jr., is an influential conservative magazine, and
Monthly Review is a long-running socialist periodical.

In scientific literature, the literature review is a category of scientific paper, which provides a synthesis of research
on a topic at that moment in time. A compilation of these reviews forms the core content of a 'tertiary' scientific
journal, with examples including Annual Reviews, the Nature Reviews series of journals and Trends. A peer review
is the process by which scientists assess the work of their colleagues that has been submitted for publication in the
scientific literature. A software review is also a form of peer review, by the co-workers.

A consumer review refers to a review written by the owner of a product or the user of a service who has sufficient
experience to comment on reliability and whether or not the product or service delivers on its promises. An expert
review usually refers to a review written by someone who has tested several peer products or services to identify
which offers the best value for money or the best set of features. A bought review is the system where the creator
(usually a company) of a new product pays a reviewer to review his new product.

Monograph

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A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author. It is often a scholarly essay or
learned treatise, and may be released in the manner of a book or journal article. It is by definition a single document
that forms a complete text in itself. An author may therefore declare his own work to be a monograph by intent, or a
reader or critic might define a given text as a monograph for the purpose of analysis. Normally the term is used for a
work intended to be a complete and detailed exposition of a substantial subject at a level more advanced than that of
a textbook. Monographs form a component of the review literature in science and engineering.

Librarians consider a monograph to be a nonserial publication complete in one volume or a finite number of
volumes. Thus it differs from a serial publication such as a magazine, journal, or newspaper.[1]

] Usage
[edit] Taxonomy (systematic biology)

In biological taxonomy a monograph is a comprehensive treatment of a taxon. Monographs typically revise all
known species within a group, add any newly discovered species, and collect and synthesize available information
on the ecological associations, geographic distributions, and morphological variations within the group. Example:
Lent & Wygodzinsky, 1979, Revision of the Triatominae (Hemiptera, Reduviidae), and their significance as vectors
of Chagas' disease. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History v. 163, article 3, pp. 125-520. [2]

The first ever monograph of a plant taxon was Robert Morison's 1672 Plantarum Umbelliferarum Distributio Nova,
a treatment of the Apiaceae.[3]

[edit] United States Food and Drug Administration regulation

In the context of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulation, monographs represent published standards by
which the use of one or more substances is automatically authorized. For example, the following is an excerpt from
the Federal Register: "The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is issuing a final rule in the form of a final
monograph establishing conditions under which over-the-counter (OTC) sunscreen drug products are generally
recognized as safe and effective and not misbranded as part of FDA's ongoing review of OTC drug products." [4]
Such usage has given rise to the use of the word monograph as a verb, as in "this substance has been monographed
by the FDA."

Dictionary

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For other uses, see Dictionary (disambiguation).
For Wikimedia's dictionary project visit Wiktionary, or see the Wiktionary article.

A dictionary, also referred to as a lexicon, wordbook, or vocabulary, is a collection of words in one or more
specific languages, often listed alphabetically, with usage information, definitions, etymologies, phonetics,
pronunciations, and other information;[1] or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also
known as a lexicon.[1] According to Nielsen 2008 a dictionary may be regarded as a lexicographical product that is
characterised by three significant features: (1) it has been prepared for one or more functions; (2) it contains data
that have been selected for the purpose of fulfilling those functions; and (3) its lexicographic structures link and
establish relationships between the data so that they can meet the needs of users and fulfil the functions of the
dictionary.

Further, each word may have multiple meanings. Some dictionaries include each separate meaning in the order of
most common usage while others list definitions in historical order, with the oldest usage first.[2]

In many languages, words can appear in many different forms, but only the undeclined or unconjugated form
appears as the headword in most dictionaries. Dictionaries are most commonly found in the form of a book, but
some newer dictionaries, like StarDict and the New Oxford American Dictionary are dictionary software running on
PDAs or computers. There are also many online dictionaries accessible via the Internet.