LIGN 143: The Structure of Spanish: About Subject Headings

Keywords vs. Subject Headings

There are two types, or levels, of search terms: keywords and subject headings.

Keywords are natural language that you will come up with on your own. These are the natural keywords you think up.

Subject headings are the structured vocabulary that the scholars in the field or the academic databases use.

The reason why these can be described as levels is because you find your keywords first and then use them to find subject headings.

The More You Know:

Finding subject headings is like learning a new language. It is necessary to know the language of scholars, because that is the language they are using for their articles. In order to find them, you need to know the terms they are using.

When you search for articles you can use any combination to find what you're looking for.

keyword + keyword

subject heading + subject heading

keyword + subject heading

Finding Subject Headings Header

There are two ways to find subject headings for your keywords.

1. Using a database thesaurus.

2. Finding articles related to your topic. They will be tagged with subject headings.

1. Using a database thesaurus

Many databases have thesauri. Sometimes they can be called different names - Subject Headings, CINAHL Subject Headings, MeSH headings (PubMed).

2. Finding articles related to your topic. They will be tagged with subject headings.

Protip: Find one relevant article and use the subject headings to see what combination of terms can find more like it.

Videos on the two methods of finding subject headings.