Starting your research

Keyword searches look for your search terms anywhere in the record -- e.g., in the title, abstract, subject heading, or other notes. Keyword searches may be less precise or relevant than searches using subject terms and often return a larger, but less useful, set of results. 

Subject searches, on the other hand, only return results in which the search term appears in the subject field.  The subject field contains “Subject Headings” or “Descriptors” - labels pulled from a special list (“thesaurus”) that are used as a way to connect related items and retrieve them all with one search.  The tricky part of subject searching is finding the official subject heading/descriptor words that when searched will pull together all of the related items. Most databases offer a thesaurus that helps you identify subject headings.

To find subject headings for your topic:

• Look to see if the database has an online thesaurus to browse for subjects that match your topic (check the Help screens).
• Some databases publish thesauri in print (e.g. Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms for the PsycInfo database). Ask Us for help using thesauri.

Another way to find subject headings:

• Start with a keyword search, using words/phrases that describe your topic.
• Browse the results; choose 2 or 3 that are relevant.
• Look at the Subject or Descriptor field and note the terms used (write them down).
• Redo your search using those terms.
• Your results will be more precise than your initial keyword search.

Here's a summary of the differences between searching with subject headings and searching with keywords.