HIST 9 - Historical Methods: Global Histories of Sugar (Schmidt, Winter 2024): Subject Headings & Keywords

Subject headings are specific, predefined terms that the Library of Congress assigns to printed material. The indexers who assign subject headings must use only terms that are listed in this "controlled vocabulary,"  which typically does not include multi-disciplinary or complex topics. Below are examples of subject headings for various aspects of "sugar." Subject headings for the broader "food studies" and other related areas will be different.

Sugar -- Social aspects -- History

Sugar trade -- Social aspects -- History

Sugar trade -- History

Sugar -- History
Sugar trade -- North America

Sweetener industry -- North America
Sugar crops -- History

Sugar plantations -- History

Sugar trade -- History

Sugar trade -- Environmental aspects

Sugar crops

Sugar -- Health aspects

Sugar plantations

Sugar -- Social aspects

Sugar trade

Sugar trade -- Social aspects
Tariff on sugar -- Great Britain

Sugar trade -- West Indies

Sugar trade -- East Indies

Slavery -- West Indies, British

Sugar trade -- West Indies, British

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:

• allows you to combine different concepts. Each concept is separated by AND (sugar AND slavery AND british empire). 
• you can add synonyms and like terms to increase your search results (industry OR market OR trade OR commerce)
• you will retrieve items that may be on topic but that were not given a relevant subject heading
• you can use the asterisk* symbol to include alternate endings to your root word:  colonial* will retrieve all records with the word colonial, colonial, colonialism, colonialist, and so forth.

Disadvantages of using keywords:

• your results may include items that are unrelated or completely off topic
• you 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