Have you ever noticed when you search for information that your search results list contains a lot of stuff that isn't really relevant? Frequently, this can be rectified by searching by subjects (or descriptors) as opposed to keywords.
For assistance on searching by subject heading, please call the library, 405-945-3251; email okc.reference@okstate.edu; or stop by the reference desk.
Subject headings (also called descriptors) describe the content of items in a database. Whether it is a book in the library catalog or an article in a library database, there will be at least one, and as many as a dozen, subject headings assigned. If we can identify a subject heading for our topic and tell the database we want all items with that subject heading, we should see much more relevant results than simply searching by a keyword.
Searching by subject is similar to field searching because subject headings are simply a specific field in the record.
Subject searching is not as intuitive as keyword searching because not all keywords are subject headings or descriptors. That is, you might not be able to guess at a subject heading.
Example: cybersecurity. If you were looking for books in the library catalog and entered cybersecurity as a subject heading, you would find no matches. However, if you did a basic search for cybersecurity, you would find several items with actual subject headings such as Computer security, Internet - Security measures, and Computer crimes.
Some databases include a thesaurus or list of subjects for that database. This allows you to find subjects to broaden or narrow your search.
Here is an example of a subject search on pneumonia from EBSCO’s Academic Search Premier database. In this list, you can see some terms with the word, “Use,” followed by a new term. The new term is the correct one to use.
If you select a term, you will see additional subjects. In this case, you see the broader term of "PEDIATRIC respiratory diseases."
Another click reveals narrower and related terms.
Finally, if we compare the results of a search by keyword and a search by subject in the database Academic Search Premier, we see the following:
Pneumonia as a keyword: 35,425
Pneumonia as a subject or descriptor: 16,007
So clearly, we can eliminate some irrelevant items on our results list if we search for subjects instead of keywords.