If you don’t know the exact subject terms for your topic, start with a keyword search. This will look for your words in the title, author name, publisher information, and other parts of the catalog record.
Keyword searches will scan book chapters, which can be great resources for your paper!
Subject searches require exact wording, but the results will be much more precise. Look for the subjects on the left side of the results screen in the UCSB Library Search.
Using the * symbol will pick up alternate endings to a word, so that ecolog* will find catalog records that contain the word ecology, ecological and ecologist.