Q. What are Subject Terms and how do I use them to search?

Subject Terms are key terms that are applied to library resources. These terms are a type of "controlled vocabulary", i.e. a limited set of words or phrases that have been applied to research materials.

These terms offer less flexibility while doing research but since they're often only applied to materials that are highly relevant, they can be extremely valuable to the research process. To do a good subject search, you may need to find out which subject terms apply to your topic.

How do I find Subject Terms?

• By browsing the list of Subject Terms
  • ​You can search for subject terms using the Browse (by Subject) feature on the library website. Find preferred terms or find out which articles/books/etc. have that term applied to them.
     
• By finding related content

  • Search the library website by keyword. Use the Subject Terms limit on the left side of the results page and select any terms that relate to your topic.

  • Alternately, find an article/book/etc. that fits your topic and open its record to check which subjects were used to categorize it. 

    e.g. This article "How quickly we forget" uses three subjects: Memory, Experimental Psychology, and Behavior. Clicking any of those subjects will lead you to more sources that use the same subject term.

    

     

How do I use Subject Terms to search?

You can use the library advanced search to find material by subject.

To do that:

1. Open the advanced search screen.
2. Choose Subject from the drop down menu, and add your subject to the search field. If you have the exact Subject Term, you can change the second drop down from 'contains' to 'exact'. You can also add more lines with keywords or subjects if you want to create a more in-depth search. 
3. Click Search. 
   
   

If your search results are too broad, you can discover narrower and related topics under Subject Terms on the left-hand side of your results page.