Thursday, March 23, 2006

Sirsi (our catalog) searching tips:

Take advantage of what are called 'subdivisions' in library lingo. This is the part of a subject heading [moral & ethical aspects] that is more specific than the first part of the heading:

EXAMPLES:
Advertising -- moral & ethical aspects
Genetic engineering -- moral & ethical aspects
Animal rights -- moral & ethical aspects

There are many handy subdivisions to use in KEYWORD searches. Try these sometime:

-- psychological aspects [e.g. smoking -- psychological aspects]
-- physiological aspects [e.g. aging -- physiological aspects]
-- travel & description [e.g. Australia -- travel & description]
-- amateur's manuals [e.g. solar heating -- amateur's manuals]
-- cross cultural studies [e.g. AIDS -- cross cultural studies]
-- economic aspects [e.g. globalization -- economic aspects]

The trick is to have a fairly broad subject, then apply one of these subdivisions.

The next time you do a search for books in the catalog, start to notice the subject headings that have been applied to each book - searching by subject headings is a very efficient, targeted way to find very relevant books on a general topic.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home