Subject Headings

Objective: Students will understand that both books and articles are assigned words to describe their contents. These terms are

referred to as subject headings.

Books and articles are assigned words to describe their contents. These words are called subject headings.

Subject headings can also be known as descriptors, controlled vocabulary, or subjects.

These terms can be very useful for finding similar information on your research question.

They can help you identify other keywords so you can do a better search.

Let’s look at a catalog record as an example. Remember the library catalog is used to find books on your topic.

Now let’s look at a record from an article database.

To use subject headings effectively, it is best to start with a keyword search. Find a book or article using the keywords from your research question.

Look through your list of results to find a book or article which helps answer your research question.

Then look at the item record to find more information about the book or article, including the subjects used to describe what the article/book is about.

You can use the subject headings found in two different ways.

First, you can use the terms provided to re-execute your search to find more relevant articles. For example, using the subjects found on the tattoo article record, you might search for “body image” AND tattooing.

Or, you can click on one of the subject links which will bring up all of the articles in that database with that subject. For example, I might click on the subject tattooing.

This will retrieve a listing of articles that have Tattooing as a subject.

Keep in mind that catalogs and article databases may use different descriptors for different terms. One database might use the term movie, while another might use the term motion picture. To determine which term is used, do a keyword search and look at the subjects listed.

Summing Up

Subject headings are words used to describe books and articles.

Subject headings can be used to refine your search by suggesting other useful keywords.