What is KEYWORDS searching?

KEYWORDS searching allows you to search for words that appear anywhere in the author, title, subject, and several other fields of the catalog record. The other fields include publisher information, added titles, uniform headings, contents notes, conference headings, and corporate names. A KEYWORDS search might pick up one word from the title and one word from the contents notes or two words from the title or any combination. A keywords search does not search the field of the record with the item's description (i.e., the field that tells you a book has 241 pages and is 27 cm. tall.)

If you know precise information about the book you are looking for, then you should use AUTHOR, TITLE, or AUTHOR/TITLE searching; it will usually be more efficient.

You should use KEYWORDS searching when you want to search broadly. It is more flexible than searching fo a Library of Congress Subject heading or words in the title.

For example, if you want to find books about family law in Mississippi, you could search for

??????????????

in the KEYWORDS search box. You would find over a hundred records. Some would be relevant – for example, ?????????. Others would not be relevant, even though their catalog records had all the words – for example, a????????????.

If you wanted to refine your search, you could notice that the books about ???????? State were assigned the subject heading "??????" and then use those words in your search.

You might also notice that many current useful books are kept on Reserve, so you could use the Location pull-down menu in the Keywords search window to choose Reserve. You could also use the Year box in the Keywords search window to search fo works published after a given year.

You should use KEYWORDS searching when you are looking for a particular book or other publication and you are not sure whether the terms you know will appear in the book’s title or in a subject heading or content note.

For example, suppose you want to find a video about evidence that might be called "the ten commandments." If you search for

commandments and evidence

in KEYWORDS, you will find the record for a videorecording by Irving Younger called Trial Evidence Series. The contents notes show that Part 14 of the series is "The ten commandments of cross examination."

You should also use Keywords searching when you know a publisher and the subject or a word in the title. For example, you can search for

tax** and (commerce clearing or cch)

What is Search and Sort (ranking)?

In the Keywords search window, a pull-down menu enables you to choose one of three options for searching and sorting your results. The default option is Date. When you choose this option, your results are ranked with the most recently published books listed first. The second option is Alphabetical. When you choose this option, your results are listed in alphabetical order.

The third option is Relevance. When you choose this option, your results are ranked according to a complicated algorithm.

First, the system checks to see what field contains your search terms; if your terms appears in the Title field of a catalog record, then the system assigns that record a higher relevance ranking than if the terms are in the Author field. Records where the search terms appear in the Author record are ranked higher than records where the search terms are in the Subject field. For example, if you search for the word “tribe,” the system will rank books that have “tribe” in the title higher than books that have “tribe” in the author. (That might agree with your personal ranking, if you want books about Indian tribes, but not if you are looking for books written by Laurence H. Tribe.)

If your search contains more than one word, then the system next applies another test. Catalog records where the two words are close together are ranked higher than those that are not. For example, if you search for “tribe and constitution*” the system will rank very high books where those words appear in the title and the words are close together. A book where “constitutions” is in the subject heading and “tribe” is in a contents note would be ranked lower.