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Info 4: Finding Articles

Right on Target

     

Heading to the Right Subject

Subject heading search

  • indexers assign a few descriptive words that define the article
  • use these words to focus the search ; get better results

KEYWORDS:  teenagers, teens, adolescents, youth, “young adults,” minors, “secondary school students”

SUBJECT HEADING:  Gale Databases—youth

How do I find the subject heading I need?

Databases may provide a thesaurus or a subject headings list.

Sometimes a database will suggest a subject term to you when you search using words with a similar meaning, and it may not even be a term you had thought about before. Other times you will need to use the thesaurus or subject headings list.

For example, for our description of people ages 13 - 18:

  • Gale databases will point you to the subject heading Youth.
  • EbscoHost databases primarily uses the descriptor Adolescents.

A creative searcher finds a really good on-topic article, discovers the subject headings attached to it, and looks for more articles using a Subject Search.