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.                  
   
   
3. Be aware that you may retrieve items not related to your topic (called false drops)
   
   
4. When you cannot remember the exact title of an item, do a keyword search using the title words you remember.

1. New topics such as "sustainable architecture" may not yet be included in the library's special list of terms.
   
   

2. Using the appropriate subject heading for a topic will retrieve all items in the database indexed under that topic.
   
   

3. 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.