Subject Headings and Keywords

What Are They and How Are They Different?

Subject Headings = Controlled vocabulary = Descriptors = ASSIGNED words that describe a journal or magazine article, a book, a musical score, a map, a video, a recording, a Web page . . . You may select from these assigned words to create a search statement.

Keywords = Words that YOU CHOOSE from your own knowledge of a subject that describe the topic or concept you are researching or investigating. When you search using keywords in the library catalog or a database of journal articles or other research material you are generally expecting those words to appear in the article, chapter, or book title, descriptive paragraph or annotation, subject headings or descriptors and sometimes the "full text" of that article, book, or chapter.

When do you use keywords and subject headings or descriptors

 

If you are searching the library's online catalog for a book (or video or CD or Web page . . . ) on a particular topic you will need to use subject headings or keywords to create a search statement. If you are searching a database for magazine or journal articles you will also need to use keywords or subject headings--databases usually use the term descriptor instead of subject heading. Each book and article has a record which includes a selection of subject terms or phrases or descriptors assigned to it. Keywords will search any word in those assigned terms or, usually, any word in the author, title, chapter titles within books, or descriptive paragraph (or annotation) associated with the particular book.

Examples:

* You are looking in the library's online catalog for a book on religious groups that handle snakes:

It is often a good idea to start your search using keywords and then move to using subject headings or descriptors taken from the records of books or articles that look particularly interesting or relevant to you. You might also ask the librarian to show you the four large red books that serve as a thesaurus to all of the subject headings used in the library catalog.

 

* You are looking for an article in a database of journal articles. After having looked in the library catalog--you now have more terms with which to work.

* you can search for different forms of the same word through "truncation." Usually you can truncate by placing an asterik * at the end of the word. Snake* will find snakes among other forms of the word. Read database help screens to find whether you can and how to truncate words in a particular database.

Broader or Narrower

 

Search statements made up of keywords or assigned subject terms can help limit or broaden the results of your search. The descriptors Pentecostal churches -- United States or Phenomenology will most likely produce many more articles than will the descriptor Snake cults (Holiness churches). Using the keywords, (snake or snakes) and religion would result in a more varied and larger selection of articles than would (snake or snakes) and Holiness.

 

If you have any questions at all, please ask a librarian for assistance!