Spanish 311: Language, Power & Ideology

Shortening your keywords --  You can search words with a common root by "truncating" them with an *.

For example,

archiv*  will search archive, archived, archivist, and so on.

Keeping words in phrases together -- It's important to keep words in phrases together to keep them in context.  For example,

"united kingdom" would bring up items on the country we know as the United Kingdom. 

If you didn't use the quotation marks you would have items in your results list that would include these words but would not necessarily appear side by side.  Conceivably you might receive items on your list that discuss some other kingdom whose people have struggled to be united.

Keywords are the critical words used to describe your topic in the literature.  For example:  Roman gods.  Notice -- the less important words like:  an, in, the, of  are left out of the statement.  Every word you ask for has to be present in the item you're retrieving, so just use the words you really need.

Subject links are provided by the Library of Congress cataloging librarians to describe your topic consistently.  For example, you might be interested in Roman gods but the most important work is titled, "The Divine Pantheon"  which doesn't use any of the words you chose initially.

So, your best searching technique in library catalogs would be to:

1. Search using keywords to find at least one item of interest
2. Use the subject links at the bottom of the screen to find other items the Library of Congress librarians deemed to be about your topic even if the exact words weren't used in the title

When you use a huge catalog like World Cat, it's good to search using subject terms you identified in Bridge rather than by keyword.

SUBJECT HEADING examples

• Spanish language
• Spanish language -- Social aspects
• Spanish language -- Grammar, Comparative -- English
• Spanish language -- United States
• Spanish language -- Acquisition

BROWSING

History
Spain (DP1-DP402) - Level 5 Rolvaag
Latin American (F1201-F3799) - Level 5 Rolvaag

Language
Linguistics (P1-P1091) - Level 2 Rolvaag
Spanish Language (PC4001-PC4977) - Level 2 Rolvaag
Spanish Literature (PQ6001-PQ8929) - Level 2 Rolvaag

From the library home page, select the Books button

Then select Advanced Books Search

On the Advanced Books Search screen, key in your search criteria and select the language parameter to the right