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Module
1 - Searching Expertise - Fields in a Record |
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Fields in a Record
Through the magic of indexing, the parts of
each record or citation in a database or online catalog such as Socrates are searchable.
These parts are called fields.
If you enter words as a Title search,
the computer will look only in the title fields
of all the records in the database. It will try
to match the words in your title search against
the titles in the database's records.
Similarly, an Author search looks
only in the author field, and a Subject search
looks only in the subject heading field.
But... a Keyword search
looks for words in any field in the record.
It is the broadest search. In Socrates,
it is called the everything search.
When combining two or more terms, Socrates will
automatically insert the AND operator between
each word, and search anywhere in the record.
What this means is that
your results
may not
make
sense conceptually.
If you try a keyword search in Socrates
for the word gems, you will get
records that have the author's last name Gems,
a song with the word gems in an opera recording,
and a subject heading of gems in literature,
none of which refers to the original intent of
gemstones. You will soon learn how to target the
subject: gems.
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