Your search strategy for articles may be different than what you use for books or images. Many times databases will search within the full text of the article instead of relying only on descriptive tags. This means you may have to think about what other things something might be called in order to find the best matches to your topic.
By identifying key concepts and what other words or phrases describe those concepts you will get more meaningful results. With the question "How did vintage seed catalogs change the graphic design industry?" the keywords/phrases are vintage, seed, catalogs,and 'graphic design'. Here is an example of what words could be used instead:
| Original Phrase | Related words or ideas |
|---|---|
| vintage | antique, late 1800's, 19th century |
| seed | plant, bulb, garden, farm, nursery, horticulture, agriculture, flower, fruit, vegetable, botanical |
| catalog | listing, guide, "price list", manual |
| graphic design | art, illustration |
When you type things into search boxes, you are, by default, doing what is known as a keyword search. When you are looking for information on certain topics it can be helpful to do a subject search instead. However, some subject headers are not as robust or descriptive, so a highly targeted keyword search might be better in some cases. Here are some key differences between the two search types of searches:
| Keyword Search | Subject Search |
|---|---|
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