English 102 Fast Food Nation (Ulibarri) Matthews: Search Terms

EXAMPLES

Fast Food Nation

“Fast Food Restaurants” or “fast food industry” or “food service industry”

McDonalds, Burger King, Subway, In and Out Burgers, etc.

Child* or Teen or youth or adolesc*

Marketing

Advertis*

Promotions

Pricing

toys or mascots

cheap

comparison between Disney and McDonalds

Employ* or worker

KEYWORD SEARCH

• Good place to start if you do not know the terms a catalog or database uses for your topic 

• Keywords are any significant word or phrase you think of to describe your topic

• Use when searching for very new concept or jargon, like twitter

• Searches for terms anywhere in the record

• Broadens search results but may retrieve irrelevant materials

• Usually the default search

• More flexible search

• May yield too many or too few results depending on keywords used

SUBJECT SEARCH

• Best way to ensure you get all applicable documents in a catalog or article database

• Search terms (a.k.a. subject headings) must come from the database's thesaurus

• Use when you are searching for a broad concept, like global warming

• Searches for terms in subject field only

• Narrows search results but retrieves all relevant materials available

• Usually available from advanced search screens

• Less flexible search

• Need to know the exact controlled vocabulary term