Subject searching

Have you ever tried to find a phone number in the yellow pages but couldn't because you couldn't think of the correct heading the phonebook uses? For example, if you want to find doctors in the phone book, you need to look under physicians. Frustrating isn't it?!

• The yellow pages, like many other databases, is organized by subject so you can find entries on the same topic under one term.
  
  

• In a database, indexers assign terms to each record from an approved list of subject terms.
  
  

• The subject terms are sometimes called subject headings or descriptors.

Read on to discover how you can find the correct subject terms to use.

Use a subject guide

Some phone books have a list of subject terms and some don't. Some databases have a list of subject terms, often called a thesaurus. If a database has a thesaurus, use it ! The thesaurus will lead you to the correct subject terms as in these example:

But what if there isn't a subject guide or thesaurus??