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Search Techniques

Subject Heading Searching

How it works

Subject headings are official terms used to precisely describe the content of books, articles, videos, or other materials and publications. Librarians, indexers, or sometimes the authors themselves assign the terms by reviewing the content of the item and selecting appropriate terms from an official, standardized list. This list of subject headings is generally called a thesaurus. Because subject headings can be selected only from a standardized or "controlled" list, searching a database by using official subject headings is also known as controlled vocabulary searching.

One of the most commonly used subject headings lists is maintained by the Library of Congress for use in cataloging the materials added to its collections. Because of the depth and authority of this list, it is also used by most academic and public libraries in the United States for their own library catalogs. This "list," Library of Congress Subject Headings, is very detailed and fills five volumes; copies are usually available for consultation at the Reference Desk.

Some databases use other lists of controlled vocabulary, developed to meet the specialized needs of researchers in a particular discipline. Examples include the Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors, for use in the ERIC education database, the Thesaurus of Sociological Indexing Terms, for use in the Sociological Abstracts database, or Medical Subject Headings, used by medical libraries.

Often, the format and language used in subject terms is different from natural language. Below are several examples from each of the thesauri mentioned above:

Thesaurus, or subject heading list Examples of subject headings

Library of Congress Subject Headings (for general use in library catalogs)

Advertising, Political - United States
Nervous system - Diseases
Women - Germany - History - 18th century

Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors (education)

clinical teaching (health professions)
experiential learning
teacher student relationship

MLA International Bibliography Thesaurus (literature)

Spanish Civil War
feminist literary theory and criticism
Hemingway, Ernest

Medical Subject Headings (medicine)

Bacteria, Anaerobic - pathogenicity
Olfactory Receptor Neurons - physiology
Schizophrenia, Childhood - therapy

Thesaurus, or subject heading list	Examples of subject headings
Library of Congress Subject Headings (for general use in library catalogs)	Advertising, Political - United States Nervous system - Diseases Women - Germany - History - 18th century
Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors (education)	clinical teaching (health professions) experiential learning teacher student relationship
MLA International Bibliography Thesaurus (literature)	Spanish Civil War feminist literary theory and criticism Hemingway, Ernest
Medical Subject Headings (medicine)	Bacteria, Anaerobic - pathogenicity Olfactory Receptor Neurons - physiology Schizophrenia, Childhood - therapy

Advantages of subject heading searching

There are many advantages to seaching with subject headings.

you can locate relevant materials on your topic, even if different authors have used very different terminology in their works
conducting one subject heading search is more efficient than doing multiple keyword searches using a variety of terms
if the terminology used to describe a topic has changed over time, both older and newer works can be brought together under one heading
subject heading lists often use a logical structure, with broader, narrower, and related terms; they may also incorporate the use of sub-headings; these features can help you identify other useful subject headings for your topic, as well as focus your research on specific concepts

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