Unlike Subject Headings which use a precise, controlled vocabulary, Keywords are your own search terms that best express the essence of your topic.
Advantages to using keywords:
- you can use the asterisk symbol * to bring up variant endings to your root word: perform* will also retrieve performer, performers, performance, performative and so forth
- you can combine different concepts (caribbean AND carnival AND perform*)
- you can add synonyms and like terms to increase your search results (teen OR teenager OR adolescent)
- you will retrieve items that may be on topic but that were not given a relevant call number
- Keywords also allow you to combine different concepts of your search. Each distinct concept goes on a separate line, separated with the operators AND, OR, and NOT
Disadvantages of using keywords:
- your results may include items that are unrelated or completely off topic (e.g. zeppelin will also retrieve records that include led zeppelin)
- your will be searching multiple fields within the catalog record, not just the Subject Headings. This means you will get all results where your keyword appears in the Publisher, Author, Language, or other field in the record