In a database of newspaper, journal or magazine articles, each record represents:
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one magazine, journal or newspaper
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one author
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one article from a magazine, journal or newspaper
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all of the above
To solve this question, the user needs to have a basic understanding of database management systems and the structure of a database.
The correct answer is:
C. one article from a magazine, journal or newspaper
Each record in a database of newspaper, journal or magazine articles represents a single article, not an entire publication or the author of the article. Therefore, option C is the correct answer.
Option A is incorrect because it suggests that each record represents a single magazine, journal or newspaper, which is not true.
Option B is also incorrect because it suggests that each record represents a single author, which is not true either.
Option D is incorrect because it includes options A and B, which are both incorrect.
Bibliographic databases of periodicals are built around the individual article as the unit of indexing, since each article has its own author, title, abstract, and subject terms. The magazine or journal issue itself is just the container the article was published in, not what gets its own record. This is why searching such a database returns individual articles rather than whole issues or author profiles.