English 151 / GASP 103S (Brokaw)

This video focuses on PsycINFO, a psychology database, but that's not important. What is important is the fact that many databases have a Subject Thesaurus (or Subject Index) that can help us locate information on a specific topic (or subject). Watch this video to learn how to use Subjects in your searches to become more efficient and strategic with any database. 

This tutorial demonstrates how (and why) to use the thesaurus tool to find index terms or subject headings when searching PsycINFO on ProQuest.

Another advanced technique for finding information is to use field searching. This simply means using the appropriate fields in the database like Title, Author, or Subject to search for specific information.

Searching for works BY William Shakespeare is very different from searching for works ABOUT William Shakespeare. 

To search for works by an author:

Most databases and library catalogs list the author by last name, first name. Try searching this way. Use the dropdown menu to select the "author" or "creator" field. 

To search for works about a person or topic:

Enter the person (usually last name, first name) or the topic in the search box, and choose "Subject" from the dropdown menu.