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Creating a Plan

a. Keyword Searching | b. Advanced Keyword Searching | c. Subject Searching

Subject Searching

Keyword searching uses your own words to find articles. Subject searching allows you to search for items that are organized under a pre-selected topic (like the headings in the yellow pages).

Often subject terms are hard to figure out. It works well to:

• start out with a keyword search
• find an item that relates to your topic
• look at the SUBJECT Headings for that item
• perform a Subject Search using one of the subject headings you found one!

This helps to focus your search and improve the relevancy of your results.

The example below shows a "record" that was retrieved from a database. You can see where the subject headings are listed. Some databases will refer to subjects as descriptors.

sample keyword search: media and politics
Item description:

AUTHOR: Dautrich, Kenneth.

TITLE: How the news media fail american voters

PUBLISHED: New York : Columbia University Pr., c1999.

SUBJECTS: Press and politics--United States.
Journalism--Political aspects--United States.
Elections--United States.