Research Guides: Topic Development and Starting Your Search: Keywords vs. Subjects

Keyword Searching

Most open search boxes (like the one on Google and the library's search box on our homepage) search by keyword.

This means the search engine or database is trying to match what you type in, anywhere that it appears on the page or record.

This is why when you type a whole question or sentence you often get advice boards like Reddit as your first results, and why some pages aren't relevant at all.
It also means that a lot of false hits come up. For instance, if you search just the word "Roman", you will get results for the Roman Empire, romance, the Romanovs, company names that have "Roman" in them (like Roman fashion in London), movie director Roman Polanski, etc.

The search engine is only matching what you type in: R-O-M-A-N. It cannot assign meaning to the term, so it brings back everything that has those letters in that order.

Subject Searching

Library resources, on the other hand, are organized by subject heading. This works like the hashtag # in twitter (X), except more powerful.

On twitter (X), the #hashtag links you to everything with the same tag, but there are often many tags for the same idea: #unitedstates #usa #US #america etc.
But library resources like the catalog & databases use a controlled vocabulary, meaning there's only ONE subject term assigned to an idea: United States

When you click on a subject, you can be sure you are seeing EVERYTHING that has been "tagged" with that same subject. This gets you to relevant resources faster than a keyword search.

How do I know what the subject term for my idea is?

Since subject terms are created to organize, and not the way we naturally speak and think, finding the relevant subject term can be hard.

A good strategy is to start with a keyword search, and find a source that is generally on your topic in those results. Once you click on the title for that source, you will find the related subject terms in the record.

You can also Ask a Librarian! We work with subject terms all the time and understand how they are organized, so we can show you where to find them and how to use them.

When should I use keywords vs. subjects?

KEYWORD SEARCHING	SUBJECT SEARCHING
Natural language	Defined "controlled vocabulary"
Familiar	Not always intuitive
Searches everywhere in a record or on a page	Searches specific subject terms only
Flexible	Defined
Often yields irrelevant results	Subheadings can help to focus results
May not find all relevant results	Results are usually directly related to the topic

Keyword search when:

Your term is jargon, very new, technical, or unique (like someone's name).
You don't know the exact title or author of a work.
More than one discipline or topic is involved. (e.g. autism AND education)
You don't know the subject heading. (See the "How do I know what the subject term for my idea is?" box on the left.)

Subject search when:

You need information about something, someone, or someplace (i.e. books about Mark Twain, not books by him).
You need multiple relevant resources on your topic.
Your term might have multiple meanings depending on the context (browsing the Subject section, often located on the side of the page, will help you find the correct subheading).
You want to exclude false hits and results that are not on your topic. (e.g. Depression, Mental vs. Depressions-1929-United States)

You are smarter than the database.

Always remember databases can't think. Whether you're searching Google or a library database, it doesn't know that when you type "girls" you might mean teenage girls, or Hispanic girls, the TV show "Girls," or that you actually want information about all females, regardless of age.

Always look at your search results and ask yourself:

What's missing?
What didn't show up that I expected to?
What's here that I didn't expect?
Are there other words for my idea?