8. Databases: Definition

A database is a collection of information in electronic format organized in a logical fashion. Some examples of databases you may encounter in your daily life are a telephone book, an airline reservation system, and files on your computer.

Some examples of databases you may encounter when using the library are the EJC, the library's collection of full-text journals; ERIC, a database of education materials; and the World Wide Web, a collection of resources on the Internet.

There is a record for each unique item in a database; for example, an article in the ERIC database or a book in the XPLORE Library Catalog.

Records store pieces of information about the item in fields. Databases typically have fields for for the author, title, subject, date, publisher, etc. The example below shows the fields in XPLORE, a database of materials that the XU library owns.