Although a Subject search is one way to begin looking for information on your topic, an "Any Word Anywhere" search provides an excellent alternative method.
Run your search:
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The search produces 393 results! They are presented as a list of titles.
The first few of these are the same as those turned up in a Subject Search. But you would only know that after you passed through the list of Subjects and on to the list of titles. But some of the results will not turn up using a Subject search. Why not? "Eating Disorders" may have been tucked away under other subject headings.
Let's take a look at the record for the item. The record contains all the information about the title. There is only one record no matter how many copies of a particular item there are in the whole library system. However, different editions of a work, paperback versus hardback versions of a book for example, will have different records. A look at the record shows why this one comes up in this search but not in a subject search:
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"Eating disorders" turns up in the list of contents, not under the "subjects". Even if it had appeared as part of the title or subtitle, it would not appear in a Subject search unless it was also categorized under the subject heading of "eating disorders". In the case of the item shown here, eating disorders are only a small section of a larger topic, genetics and behavior. But if you were writing about eating disorders, this book might be a useful one for your research because it would put your topic in a larger context.
But the majority of items retrieved are on entirely unrelated subjects. Why? Because the catalog does what you tell it to do — it looks for any of your search terms anywhere in the record. If any one of them occurs, it is included in the search results. Try an Any Word Anywhere search yourself by clicking on the catalog icon below— try searching for "reconstruction" and "south" as if you were doing a paper about the South after the Civil War.
An Any Word Keyword Search can be invaluable for tracking down a particular work quickly if you know the author and title, even if it is a short story or essay (and sometimes even poems).
For example, let's say you wanted William Faulkner's delightfully creepy "A Rose for Emily". If you put in 3 distinctive words connecting the title and author and ran a search:
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You would get more than 402 results in spite of the distinctive words because all it takes is any one of those words showing up once in any part of the record!
But, if you add a plus sign (+) before each term, as in the example:
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You narrow your search down to a single result in the library's collection. While you still may be missing copies of the story in some anthologies, particularly early ones, you do eliminate all of the false positive results. If you expand your search to the entire I-Share system, you will net a larger pool of results, but keep the same level of precision. Note that items that do not have Faulkner listed as the author, might not have turned up under a standard author search.
Try an Any Word Anywhere search yourself by clicking on the catalog icon below— try searching for Ray Bradbury's short story "The Small Assassin" by selecting distinct terms and following the process above.
Expand your search to the I-Share system.
Remember, for any item you find, you need to check the copy information, located below the record for the item, to find out if it is available:
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Clearly Any Word Anywhere is a powerful search tool, especially when used in conjunction with Subject searching. But you need to understand its strengths and weaknesses. Take advantage of these tools to make the catalog be your Research Partner!
And REMEMBER, if you have trouble with this, or any other stage in the research process, you can ask for Help! Ask your teacher! Ask a Librarian! If you need to, just hit the PANIC button! |
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For information about this, or any other
Library Web Page, contact the
Library.
©Ruth B. Lindemann, 2003 Danville Area
Community College
2/4/03
Revised 11/3/06
