Glossary

A

Acquisitions
Processes related to ordering materials and managing expenditures.

Apache
Open-source web server software used to serve both static content and dynamic web pages in a secure and reliable way. More information is available at http://apache.org.

B

Balance stop percent
A setting in acquisitions that prevents you from making purchases when only a specified amount of the fund remains.

C

Call number
An item's call number is a string of letters and or numbers that work like map coordinates to describe where in a library a particular item "lives."

Circulation modifiers
Circulation modifiers pull together Loan Duration, Renewal Limit, Fine Level, Max Fine, and Profile Permission Group to create circulation rules for different types of materials. Circulation Modifiers are also used to determine Hold Policies.

Circulating library
The library which has checked out the item.

Circulation library
The library which is the home of the item.

Circulation limit sets
Refines circulation policies by limiting the number of items that users can check out. 

Circulation modifiers
Fields used to control circulation policies on specific groups of items.

Copies
Connect call numbers to particular instances of that resource at a particular library. Each copy has a barcode and must exist in a particular copy location.

D

Distribution formulas
Used to specify the number of copies that should be distributed to specific branches and copy locations.

Due date
The due date is the day on or before which an item must be returned to the library in order to avoid being charged an overdue fine.

E

Electronic data interchange (EDI)
Transmission of data between organizations using electronic means. This is used for Acquisitions.

F

FIFO (First In First Out)
In a FIFO environment, holds are filled in the order that they are placed.

Fund tags
Tags used in acquisitions to allow you to group Funds.

Funding sources
Sources of the monies to fund acquisitions of materials.

Funds
Allocations of money used for purchases.

H

Hold boundaries
Define which organizational units are available to fill specific holds.

Holdings import profile
Identifies the Import Item Attributes definition.

Holding subfield
Used in the acquisitions module to map subfields to the appropriate copy data.

I

Import item attributes
Used to map the data in your holdings tag to fields in the copy record during a MARC import.

Insufficient quality fall-through profile
A back-up merge profile to be used for importing if an incoming record does not meet the standards of the minimum quality ratio.

Item barcode
Item barcodes uniquely identify each specific item entered into the Catalog.

J

Jabber
The communications protocol used for client-server message passing within Evergreen. Now known as XMPP (eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol), it was originally named "Jabber."

    
Juvenile flag
User setting used to specify if a user is a juvenile user for circulation purposes.

L

Loan duration
Loan duration (also sometimes referred to as "loan period") is the length of time a given type of material can circulate.

M

MARC
Acronym for Machine Readable Cataloging.The MARC formats are standards for the representation and communication of bibliographic and related information in machine-readable form. 

MARC batch export

Mass exporting of MARC records out of a library system.

MARC batch import
Mass importing of MARC records into a library system.

MARCXML
Framework for working with MARC data in a XML environment.

Match score
Indicates the relative importance of that match point as Evergreen evaluates an incoming record against an existing record.

Minimum quality ratio
Used to set the acceptable level of quality for a record to be imported.   

O

OPAC
Acronym for Online Public Access Catalog. An OPAC is an online interface to the database of a library's holdings, used to find resources in their collections. It is possibly searchable by keyword, title, author, subject or call number.

OpenSRF
Acronym for Open Scalable Request Framework (pronounced 'open surf'). OpenSRF is a stateful, decentralized service architecture that allows developers to create applications for Evergreen with a minimum of knowledge of its structure.

Organizational units
Organizational Units are the specific instances of the organization unit types that make up your library's hierarchy.

Organization unit type
The organization types in the hierarchy of a library system.

Overlay/merge profiles
During a MARC import this is used identify which fields should be replaced, which should be preserved, and which should be added to the record.

Owning library
The library which has purchased a particular item and created the volume and copy records.

P

Parent organizational unit
An organizational unit one level above whose policies may be inherited by its child units. 

Parts
Provide more granularity for copies, primarily to enable patrons to place holds on individual parts of a set of items.

Patron barcode / library card number
Patrons are uniquely identified by their library card barcode number.

Pickup library
Library designated as the location where requested material is to be picked up. 

PostgreSQL
A popular open-source object-relational database management system that underpins Evergreen software.

Propagate funds
Create a new fund for the following fiscal year with the same parameters as your current fund.

Providers
Vendors from whom you order your materials. Set in the Acquisition module.

Purchase Order (PO)
A document issued by a buyer to a vendor, indicating types, quantities, and prices of materials.

Q

Quality metrics
Provide a mechanism for Evergreen to measure the quality of records and to make importing decisions based on quality. 

R

Record match sets
When importing records, this identifies how Evergreen should match incoming records to existing records in the system.

Recurring fine
Recurring Fine is the official term for daily or other regularly accruing overdue fines. 

Rollover 
Used to roll over remaining encumbrances and funds into the same fund the following year.

S

Shelving location
Shelving location is the area within the library where a given item is shelved.

SIP
Acronym for Standard Interchange Protocol. SIP is a communications protocol used within Evergreen for transferring data to and from other third party devices, such as RFID and barcode scanners that handle patron and library material information. Version 2.0 (also known as "SIP2") is the current standard. It was originally developed by the 3M Corporation.

SRU
Acronym for Search & Retrieve URL Service. SRU is a search protocol used in web search and retrieval. It expresses queries in Contextual Query Language (CQL) and transmits them as a URL, returning XML data as if it were a web page. See Also SRW.

Staff client
The graphical user interface used by library workers to interact with the Evergreen system. Staff use the Staff Client to access administration, acquisitions, circulation, and cataloging functions.

Standing penalties
Serve as alerts and blocks when patron records have met certain criteria, commonly excessive overdue materials or fines; standing penalty blocks will prevent circulation and hold transactions. 

T

Template Toolkit (TT)
A template processing system written in Perl.

TPAC
The web based public interface in Evergreen written using functionality from the Template Toolkit.

X

XML
Acronym for eXtensible Markup Language, a subset of SGML. XML is a set of rules for encoding information in a way that is both human-readable and machine-readable. It is primarily used to define documents but can also be used to define arbitrary data structures. It was originally defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

XMPP
The open-standard communications protocol (based on XML) used for client-server message passing within Evergreen. It supports the concept of a consistent domain of message types that flow between software applications, possibly on different operating systems and architectures. More information is available at http://xmpp.org.

See Also: Jabber. 

xpath
The XML Path Language, a query language based on a tree representation of an XML document. It is used to programmatically select nodes from an XML document and to do minor computation involving strings, numbers and Boolean values. It allows you to identify parts of the XML document tree, to navigate around the tree, and to uniquely select nodes. The currently version is "XPath 2.0". It was originally defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Z

Z39.50
An international standard client–server protocol for communication between computer systems, primarily library and information related systems.

See Also: SRU