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Native American Research Tutorial

Searching the San Juan College Catalog: Subject Searching I

Subject searches can help expand and narrow a search. They can pull many items that use different terms together under one subject heading. They can also narrow a broad search by focusing on specific aspects of the topic. They can also show relationships between topics and provide additional topics to search.

There are a variety of strategies to find Subject Headings helpful for a topic being researched.

1. Search by Subject

The SJC Catalog can be searched in a number of ways. One type of search, "Subject browse" will produce a list of Subject Headings, for example.

The results. Note that you do not get a list of items. Instead you get a list of Authority Records. These are the approved subject headings used in the SJC Library Catalog. To see more, click "Next Page."

The next step is to find a subject heading that matches your query or research interest. Clicking on the "next" arrow three times, we com to the Subject Heading "Hopi Indians--Legends":

This produces a Brief Record display of the nine titles with the subject heading, "Hopi Indians--Legends." To get more information on a specific item, click on the call number or title (both highlighted in blue).

The Holdings portion of the record (mentioned in last lesson) provides additional information about the item. In this case, there is an additional subject heading for Hopi Indians--Religion and mythology, which also might be useful to see other aspects of this topic.

This takes you back to the Authority List. Click on the highlighted titles link.

Here are the results in the brief record display.

After scanning the entire list of 18 titles, lets take a closer look at item 1, Corn is life Videorecording.

Pay special attention to the physical description. This will be important for finding it in the library, since it is a video and not a book.

You can also find related subjects in the Authority List. Here is the list for a Search by Subject for Hopi religion.

Note that this list has a "See also" reference. If you click on this "See Also" button you will get other options that might not have seemed so obvious.

If you click on the highlighted term "Kachinas," an authority list will appear with additional subject headings.

Also note how many of the Library of Congress Subject Headings are quite similar. For Native American research, it is important to look closely at the subject headings in order to find all of the related ways that a topic like "culture" can be expressed.
 

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