Author-Mogil H. Michael
Title -Extreme weather : understanding the science of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, heat waves, snow storms, global warming and other atmospheric disturbances
Publ. Info- New York, Ny: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, c2007
| LOCATION | CALL NO. | STATUS |
|---|---|---|
| Book Stacks | QC981 .M65 2007 | ON THE SHELF |
Subject Headings
I have more entries with my subject heading search than with my keyword search.
I think they are more on target because the search had much more detail.
The difference between keyword search and subject search is with keyword you can give more detail to what you are looking for as far as the subject and with the subject search you can not.
You don't give me enough detail here to know what's really going on. You don't give me your keyword term, although I suspect it might be "tornadoes" because that's highlighted in red.
ReplyDeleteYour first challenge with a term such as tornadoes, if that's what you used, is the spelling. Tornados is an alternate plural spelling of the word. Your best bet, therefore, is to use truncation to pick up tornado, tornados, and tornadoes, as in
tornado*
When I looked up the book you chose, I saw that it had very broad subject headings:
Weather
Natural disasters
Climatology
If this were my search, I would have done one of two things:
1. looked for another book with more specific subject headings
2. changed my search terms in my original keyword search.
As for defining the difference between keyword and subject heading, keywords are natural language that you choose for yourself. The computer then conducts a machine search for that exact string of characters. Subject headings are structured language. You can view the 5 volumes of subject headings at the reference desk, which I recommended in my materials to you last week. Human beings read every one of these books and assign one of the pre-structured subject headings to that book. As a result, the books listed under any heading, broad or narrow, will be exactly about that subject. That's what makes subject headings so valuable.