A database is an organized collection of information.  It can be paper or electronic.

An example of a paper database is a telephone book.  A telephone book is an organized collection of names, addresses, and telephone numbers.

All databases are made up of records.  Each record in a database represents one item.  To continue the phonebook example, each record in a phonebook is made up of the various pieces of information related to one individual.

Each record is further divided into fields.  A field is a specific piece of information in a record.  A phonebook record, for example, is made up of several specific pieces of information: a last name, a first name, a middle initial, an address, and a phone number.  Each one is a field.

Electronic databases, like a phonebook, are organized collections of information.  The advantage to an electronic database is that it is searchable. 

The words that you type into the search bar of an electronic database are your search terms.  You can use one word, two words, or several words.  When you do a search in an electronic database, the computer looks through all of the records in the database, trying to find those words.  When it finds a record that contains them, it puts that record in a list for you, called the results list.