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Subject Headings |
A
subject
heading is the designation for a person, place, or thing that
has been selected by an authority such as the Library of Congress,
the National Library of Medicine, or ERIC, the Educational Resources
Information Center.
Both
library catalogs and research databases include subject headings in
their full records. Searching by subject heading, or controlled
vocabulary, has several advantages
over searching by key words.
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Subject
Headings In Library Catalogs
The
SSU Library's catalog records usually include either a field labeled
SUBJECT or a field labeled MED SUBJ. Sometimes
both are present.
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Library
of Congress Subject Headings
Terms
in the SUBJECT field of the catalog record are Library of
Congress subject headings.
Library
of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), the 5-volume set of
"big red books," on the
document stand beside the Clark Memorial Library Reference Counter,
provides an alphabetical list of all LC subject headings. LCSH
also includes information about broader, narrower, and related
headings, as well as the call number(s) commonly associated with a
particular subject heading.
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Medical
Subject Headings
Terms
in the MED SUBJ field are Medical Subject Headings, provided
by the National Library of Medicine. Medical Subject Headings
are searchable
online, and are also accessible via the thesauri in research
databases like MEDLINE and CINAHL.
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Subject
Headings in Research Databases
Because
research databases are produced by many different companies, subject
headings in research databases may be, but are not always, the same
terms as the Library of Congress Subject Headings or the Medical
Subject Headings.
Some
databases, like MEDLINE, include an online thesaurus that can be
utilized to locate the correct subject heading. The companies
that produce these databases often provide the thesaurus in a hard
copy version.
| Database |
Title of
Corresponding Thesaurus in Hard Copy |
| Biological Abstracts |
Biosis Search Guide |
| ERIC |
Thesaurus
of ERIC Descriptors |
| PsycINFO |
Thesaurus of
Psychological Index Terms |
Some thesauri, such as The
Contemporary Thesaurus of Social Science Terms and Synonyms and
the Art & Architecture Thesaurus, are compilations of
terms from multiple databases. The terms suggested in these
resources could be used in either subject or keyword searches.
If you need further assistance,
please Ask-a-Librarian
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