Chapter 3 The Library Catalog -- Follow a WORDS search

Table of Contents

Suppose you were interested in cosmetic surgery.

1. Go to the Library Catalog
2. Click on WORDS
3. In the text box, type these words: cosmetic surgery
4. Click on SEARCH
   
   The WORDS program will search for records that have those two words in their titles, subject headings, and/or content notes.

The library catalog gives you a detailed account of the occurrences of each of the words you search:

• COSMETIC is in 10 titles.
• SURGERY is in 49 titles.
• Both "COSMETIC" and "SURGERY" are in 8 titles.
• There are 8 entries with COSMETIC & SURGERY (or, rather, these were the appropriate numbers the last time this page was revised)

Here's a picture of what you'll get, having done this WORDS search.

Working from the screen you retrieved when you did your WORDS search for cosmetic surgery, click on either of these titles: Am I Thin Enough Yet? or Many Mirrors.

Notice that cosmetic surgery is used in the Contents list -- the term is part of the table of contents for the book. Look where it says Subject(s) and you'll see that the Library of Congress Subject Headings are other terms, e.g., Body image. If you click on one of the Subject terms, you get another list of titles for this new subject.

This illustrates how you can use combinations of WORDS and SUBJECTS searches to explore what the library has on a topic.