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Searching Tips
Keyword Searching Subject Searching
  1. Use keyword when your term may be very new, very distinctive, or jargon, e.g. “cyberspace”, “HTML”.
  2. Use a variety of keywords. There may be additional items on your topic that use different terms. see example
  3. Be aware that you may retrieve items not related to your topic. see example
  4. When you cannot remember the exact title of an item, do a keyword search using the title words you remember.
  1. Using the appropriate subject heading for a topic will retrieve all items in the database indexed under that topic.
  2. If you do not know the appropriate subject heading for your topic, conduct a keyword search first and look at the subject heading(s) of a relevant item. see example
[animated gif of movies] For example, if you are looking for items on the “movies”, use additional keywords such as “film”, “films”, “cinema”, or “motion pictures”.
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For example, using the keyword “cricket” ...
... will retrieve items about the sport [cricket-the-sport]
[cricket-the-insect] ... as well as the insect.
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For example, if you are looking for items on ocean birds and do not know the appropriate subject heading to use, do the following:
1. Conduct a keyword search using the term “ocean birds”.
[WebLUIS catalog screen showing search results #1]

2. Once you have a relevant item, check the subject heading.
3. Now conduct a subject search using the correct subject heading, sea birds.
[WebLUIS catalog screen showing search results #2]

This search results in a list of all the items on the topic of ocean birds (indexed in the database as “sea birds”).

Chapter 2, Page 8

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