A keyword search retrieves the search word(s) or phrases (see Electronic Searching) from the title, abstract, and subject/descriptor. In the example below, the search terms (new deal and roosevelt) are pulled from the title and the abstract. The search screen for EBSCO databases default to keyword search. Note the subject search icon at the top of the search screen must be selected to do a subject search.

Biography, Dec2001, Vol. 5 Issue 12, p80, 1p, 1c Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Abstract: Profiles United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, chosen as one of 'Biography' magazine's 40 American Classics. Fulfillment of the promise for a New Deal; Terms served as president; Marriage to Eleanor.

Keyword searching on the World Wide Web and other full text databases, however, can be even broader because the search words or phrases are being pulled from the complete text of articles and documents. This is the biggest disadvantage of keyword searching: many retrieved items may NOT be relevant. Databases are simply looking for matches without consideration of the meaning of the term. For example, a search for articles on the country of Turkey can turn up interesting results.

A subject search involves searching only in the subject field of the database. The library catalog has subject headings assigned to each item indexed.

The importance of knowing the correct subject heading to use is illustrated by this example. To find this book on the people of North Africa, the subject heading Ethnology Africa North must be used. In most cases it is more productive to do a keyword search in your school library catalog.

Comparison At A Glance

Keyword Searching	Subject Searching
searches in any number of fields and/or the full text of documents	searches only in the subject/descriptor field
any significant words/phrases can be considered keywords	search terms must come from the database's thesaurus
number of items retrieve potentially large on the Web	number of items retrieved potentially smaller
may retrieve irrelevant items	high degree of relevancy

 

On to the next section... Periodicals

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Last modified: October, 2003 by Steinke, Ague, Feuerhelm, Maxwell, and Warburg