Advantages and Disadvantages of Keyword Searching

Keyword searching has many advantages:

• Keyword searching finds words throughout the record; it will draw the largest list of results.
• Keyword searching will lead you to subject headings. (More on that later!)

Keyword searching also has disadvantages:

• Effective keyword searching requires some training and practice in using the search protocols.
• Because most words have many synonyms and related concepts, keyword searches will probably retrieve unrelated records that are not on your topic.

Once you find books that look like what you generally want, start using appropriate subject headings to continue your search.