Library Jargon: Student Recognition of Terms and Concepts Commonly Used by Librarians in the Classroom

Abstract

This article reports the results of a study that used a pair of fifteen-item multiple-choice surveys to measure first- and second-year university student recognition of a select group of commonly used library terms. A total of 297 students responded. The results from the surveys indicate that commonly used terms such as plagiarism, reference services, research, copyright, and synonyms have high levels of recognition whereas library or computer-specific terms such as Boolean logic, bibliography, truncation, precision, and descriptor do not. The article includes a number of suggestions for overcoming this potential impediment to classroom communication.