Basic Search Tips

Most databases, including library catalogs, employ a thesaurus of acknowledged terms that you can use to search for a particular subject. Keyword searches let you use your own words, essentially bypassing the thesaurus.

Keyword Searching vs Subject Searching

Keyword Searching is Broad

Subject Searching is Specific

Your search word will be looked for in the title, author name, publisher information, subject, etc
If you do a keyword search for "Boston", you would find books published by publishers located in Boston, books written by George L. Boston, CDs by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, etc.
The advantage is: you’ll usually find something -though it may not be the most relevant title- on your topic.
The disadvantage is: your words may not describe your topic using the acknowledged terms.

Your search word will be looked for in the subject of the book or article. If you were wishing to find books about Boston during the revolutionary war, and knew that one of the Library of Congress subject headings was
"Boston (Mass.) -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783", you would be able to find materials in Tisch Library focused on your topic.
The advantage is: you can search for the most relevant materials.
The disadvantage is: you may need to know some specialized vocabulary or terminology.

Keyword Searching

Subject Searching in the Library Catalog

Subject Searching in Databases

Keyword Searching

If you know the keywords you want to use for searching, the next step is to figure out how to type in your search into the database's search engine. Most of the Tisch Library databases, including the library catalog, do not work like a web search engine and you need to use words like AND, OR, and NOT (sometimes called Boolean or search operators), and other techniques in order to quickly find the most relevant sources for your research.

Suppose we're interested in researching global warming. The following examples could be used to narrow down or expand our search.

This is an example of a keyword search without the search techniques telling the database search engine what to do

Keyword search: global warming agriculture
the search global warming agriculture has only 7 results

We only found 7 citations, because the database search engine looked for "global warming agriculture" as a phrase, but don't you think there has to be more information available on our topic?

Improve your searches by using AND, OR and NOT:

Use AND when you want to combine two or more terms that differ in their meaning. This will improve your list of search results. A search for global warming and agriculture will find results about both topics.
Use OR to combine terms that are similar in meaning. This will broaden your search, finding results about either of your topics.In order to broaden your search on global warming, you could search for global warming or greenhouse effect
Use NOT (or AND NOT in the library catalog) to exclude results about an unwanted topic. The search hurricanes not north carolina will find articles about hurricanes, not hurricanes in North Carolina or the North Carolina Hurricanes hockey team.

Truncation and Wildcards

Truncation To be sure you’re searching all the varieties of a word environment simply use the database’s truncation symbol, usually an asterisk, though symbols vary from one database to another.	environment* finds word variations like environmental, environmentalist, environments etc
Wildcards Wildcards are symbols that allow you to search for variations within a word.	wom?n finds women, woman, womyn, etc.

Truncation symbols and wildcards vary among databases, so be sure to look at the help screens for the database you are searching, or look at the database searching tips page.

Phrase Searching

When you are searching for something specific and your words have to be in precise order you can often use quotation marks to limit your search to a phrase. This technique of refining or limiting a search works in many article databases, but is not necessary in the library catalog.

"greenhouse gas emissions"

Putting it all together

You can combine concepts from your research topic by using AND, OR and NOT. When constructing a complex search, you need to tell the database search engine the order in which to process your search, much like using parentheses are in algebra. Terms within parentheses are combined first.

Keyword search: (global warming or greenhouse effect) and kyoto protocol and (emission* or gas)
example search results with (global warming or greenhouse effect) and kyoto protocol and (emission* or gas)

While the earlier searches might have found too many articles to look through, by combining keywords and synonyms with search operators you can find a list of articles targeted to your research interests.

Subject Searching in the Library Catalog

Subjects for books in the library catalog are based on Library of Congress Subject headings. The subject headings function like a thesaurus, allowing you to use the official terminology to find books about a specific topic. While keyword searching allows you to find books or other library items that might be related to your topic, subject searching allows you to find relevant materials with a greater degree of precision than keyword searching.

One way to improve your results with subject searching is to first do a keyword search. When looking at your search results, click on the option for "More Details" that you will see near the title.

The detailed record for an item will show you its subject headings. You can click on any of these subject headings to find related items. So an item that you found doing a keyword search for the Kyoto Protocol may have the following subject headings:

library catalog record with library of congress subject headings

Click on any of the subject headings in the catalog record above to see more focused results.

You can also use a subject search to locate different materials. If you're looking for background information and want to find a dictionary or encyclopedia on your topic, a search like these:

Ecology -- Encyclopedias
English literature -- Dictionaries
Psychology -- Periodicals
Asians in motion pictures -- Video recordings

will find resources about your subject confined to the type of material that you specify. If you aren't sure about the subject heading to search for, you can ask a librarian for suggestions, consult the LC subject headings reference books near the Tisch reference desk, or look at the Library of Congress Classification Outline.

Subject Searching in Databases

Article databases also use subjects to classify articles, allowing you to find articles on a topic using the language and terminology that are unique to your field of study.

Many databases also have their own thesaurus for subject searching, which you can use to construct your searches and learn the official terms used to describe your research topic. Some databases use Library of Congress Subject Headings.
Look at the database help page for the database you are searching or look at the database searching tips page for additional help.
Ask for help; a librarian can give you suggestions about the best way to search.