51 Subject Searchin - Search Tactics (Information Research)
Description
This article is from the Information Research FAQ, by David Novak david@spireproject.com with numerous contributions by others.
51 Subject Searchin - Search Tactics (Information Research)
We can do better than searching the subject index of a library
catalogue. Try instead to search for a book which interests you - which
you can usually find easily with a simple title search - and then
selecting the subjects that book are indexed under.
Many of the library catalogues are making this particularly easy by
incorporating links into the catalogue results. A quick look at the
Library of Congress, for example, will show how all the subject fields
are linked to further searching.
We can show this in action by looking at the book Earth Time [1] by
David Suzuki, at my State Library. As you can see down the bottom, it
is indexed under Social Ecology [2] and Human Ecology [3].
This kind of 'locate then expand' is an effective search technique used
in a number of situations. In commercial databases, we may search for a
company then expand to make sure we catch any different company
spellings. We may also wish to search for a book, then search for books
by the same publisher.
[1]
http://henrietta.liswa.wa.gov.au/search/asuzuki+david/1,2,46,B/frameset&asuzuki+david+t+1936&11,,45
[2]
http://henrietta.liswa.wa.gov.au/search/dsocial+ecology/-5,-1,0,B/browse
[3]
http://henrietta.liswa.wa.gov.au/search/dhuman+ecology/-5,-1,0,B/browse
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