UPMSP Vocational Library Science flashcards

34 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Five Laws of Library Science

Ranganathan's 1931 principles: books are for use, every reader his book, every book its reader, save the reader's time, and the library is a growing organism.

Public Library

A library funded by public money, open without charge to all members of the community, lending popular and educational material and offering reference and reading-room services.

Special Library

A library attached to an organisation such as a firm, hospital, or government department, focused on one subject field and providing fast current-awareness and documentation services to its staff.

National Library

A country's principal library, holding legal deposit rights, producing the national bibliography, and acting as a centre for interlibrary lending and bibliographic standards.

Dewey Decimal Classification

A scheme by Melvil Dewey (1876) dividing all knowledge into ten main classes numbered 000 to 900, further subdivided decimally; widely used in public and school libraries.

Colon Classification

Ranganathan's faceted scheme (1933) that builds class numbers by combining facets in the order Personality, Matter, Energy, Space, Time using colons and other connecting symbols.

Call Number

The label combining the class number for the subject and the book number for the specific item; it fixes the shelf position and links the item to its catalogue record.

AACR2

Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, second edition (1978, revised 1988 and 2002), prescribing the order and punctuation of description areas and choice of access points for catalogue entries.

MARC 21

A machine-readable cataloguing standard using numeric tags for fields: 100 personal author, 245 title, 260 publication, 300 physical description, and 650 topical subject heading.

OPAC

Online Public Access Catalogue: a computerised catalogue allowing users to search the library's holdings by author, title, subject, or keyword from terminals or the web.

Primary Source

Original, first-hand material such as research reports, theses, patents, diaries, and raw data, produced at the time of the event rather than interpreted later.

Yearbook

An annual reference publication updating facts and statistics for a given year, often supplementing an encyclopedia or covering events in a specific field or country.

Selective Dissemination of Information

An SDI service matches each user's stored interest profile against new acquisitions or articles and sends personalised alerts, differing from general current-awareness bulletins.

Reference Interview

A structured conversation in which the librarian uses open questions to clarify the user's real information need before choosing and delivering the appropriate source.

POSDCORB

Luther Gulick's management acronym: Planning, Organising, Staffing, Directing, COordinating, Reporting, and Budgeting; often applied to describe library administrative functions.

Line-Item Budget

A budget listing expenditure by object category such as books, periodicals, salaries, and equipment; simple to prepare but rigid because funds cannot easily move between lines.

Weeding

The planned removal of outdated, damaged, or unused items from a collection, often judged by MUSTIE criteria: Misleading, Ugly, Superseded, Trivial, Irrelevant, Elsewhere.

Library Consortium

A formal group of libraries pooling budgets and licences to buy shared electronic resources and to cooperate on interlibrary loan, training, and union catalogues.

Integrated Library System

Software that manages acquisition, cataloguing, circulation, serials, and the OPAC from one shared database; examples include Koha, SOUL, LIBSYS, and NewGenLib.

Dublin Core

A set of fifteen core metadata elements, including title, creator, subject, description, publisher, date, and format, used to describe digital resources in repositories.

RFID in Libraries

Radio frequency identification using tags on books and cards plus reader antennas, enabling self-checkout, rapid shelf inventory, and security gates without line-of-sight scanning.

DSpace

Open-source digital repository software used to build institutional repositories, storing and exposing research output with persistent identifiers and OAI-PMH metadata harvesting.

User Education

Planned instruction helping users locate and evaluate information independently, delivered through orientation tours, library handbooks, subject guides, and information literacy sessions.

Reader's Advisory Service

A public service in which staff suggest books to leisure readers based on stated interests, preferred genres, reading level, and past reading, without judging choices.

Accession Register

A permanent bound record of every item added to the library, listing accession number, author, title, publisher, year, price, bill number, and date of receipt.

Accession Number

A unique sequential number given to each item when received; it identifies the copy for stock verification and is written on the title page and book card.

Stock Verification

A periodic physical count of the collection compared against the accession register or shelf list, producing a discrepancy report of missing and unaccounted items.

Annual Library Report

A yearly statement to the parent institution summarising collection growth, membership, circulation, services, staff, budget use, and plans for the coming year.

Preservation versus Conservation

Preservation covers all managerial and technical actions preventing deterioration, such as climate control and proper storage; conservation is direct physical treatment and repair of damaged items.

Deacidification

A conservation treatment that neutralises acid in paper and leaves an alkaline reserve, slowing embrittlement of books printed on acidic, lignin-containing paper.

Encapsulation

A preservation method sealing a fragile document between sheets of clear polyester film, giving physical support without adhesive contact or alteration of the original item.

Library Disaster Plan

A written procedure listing priorities, salvage steps such as freeze-drying wet books within 48 hours, staff roles, and emergency contacts for fire, flood, or other damage.

Shelf Reading

A routine check comparing the order of items on shelves with their call numbers or the shelf list, used to detect misfiled and missing books and restore correct sequence.

Interlibrary Loan

A cooperative service in which one library borrows material or obtains a copy from another on the user's behalf, recording bibliographic details, loan period, and return.