Most discipline based databases and indexes will use some form of subject heading organization to identify what articles are about. These headings come from an approved list of terms and fit into a map of related terms, narrower terms, and broader terms.
Browsing subject headings is particularly useful when begining your research to identify the accepted term for a particular concept. Looking through the list of broader, narrower and related terms will help in creating your mental map of each discipline as it relates to your topic.
How to find subject headings:
Subject headings can usually be found in the the full record information in the database.
Databases will often have a feature allowing you to either search or browse subject headings. It is ususally listed under "browse" or "thesaurus" on the search page.
Subject heading vs. keyword searching:
Subject headings are added to an article based on what it is about as it's added to a database. Subject searching will return results that are about the topic you are searching. Use this to narrow a search to more relevant articles.
Keyword searches will return results if they contain the words or phrases you searched for. Articles may or may not be about the desired topic. It is a more broad search, but not all results will be relevant.
Many of our databases are discipline based. Visit the subject guides for more information on discipline specific research databases.
Other databases are multi-disciplinary, containing information in more than one subject area.
A few examples are: