Keywords--terms that can appear anywhere in a record--are the quick and easy way to search.
Using keywords, you can combine multiple ideas, or locate specific essays inside collective works.
Connectors: Use "and" or "or" to specify multiple words in any field, any order. Use "and not" to exclude words. Examples:
Wildcards: Words may be right-hand truncated using an asterisk or question mark:
Examples : slave*, wom?n
Adjacency: "And" is assumed between words. Place phrases in quotes. Example:
"tenant farmers"
Subject Headings--terms applied by catalogers or indexers--describe the content of the item. Often, subject headings are divided by geographic place, by time period, by ethnic group, or other aspects. Subject headings are searched as phrases.
Using subject headings will pull together related records with terminology you may have not considered in your keyword search.
Examples:
| keywords / ideas | subject headings |
| women in the civil war |
united states--history--civil war, 1860-1865--women |
| agricultural mechanization |
farm mechanization |
| poverty in the south |
rural poor--southern states |
Search in OneSearch and WorldCat, the union catalog of libraries worldwide, under subjects and keywords such as:
| broad topics | sample subject terms |
|---|---|
| civil war |
|
| reconstruction |
|
| populism in the south |
|
| jim crow and the civil rights struggle |
|
| sunbelt and urban south |
|
| southern religion |
|
| ideas about the south |
|