Gulf Coast (Miss.) -- Fiction
Mississippi
Mississippi -- Gulf Coast
Gulf Coast (Mississippi) -- Fiction
Hurricane Katrina (2005)
African American children -- Fiction
African American teenage girls -- Fiction
Brothers and sisters -- Fiction
Motherless families -- Fiction
African American families -- Mississippi -- Fiction
Rural poor -- Mississippi -- Fiction
Hurricane Katrina, 2005 -- Fiction
African American children
African American families
African American teenage girls
Brothers and sisters
Motherless families
Rural poor
Teenagers -- Fiction
Girls -- Fiction
Siblings -- Fiction
African Americans -- Mississippi -- Fiction
Poor -- Mississippi -- Fiction
FICTION -- African America;
FICTION -- Literary
African American families -- Fiction
Rural poor -- Fiction
National Book Award; Fiction
Social Classes
Social Class
Working Class
Poverty
Poor
While not official subject headings, keywords can be very useful in your research. Keyword searches look at all the information in the book or article record including title, author, abstract, table of contents, etc. It is always helps to think of synonyms, as the way one person would describe something is not the same way another would.
Hurricane Katrina
Greek myths or Greek Mythology or Mythology
Medea and Jason
growing up
adolescent
Southern or South or American South
African American
writer or author
female or woman or women
Using the correct words to search will help you find relevant information, but what is correct? Different authors and search tools use different words to describe the same concepts, so it is useful to have a list of similar and related terms in your tool kit when you set out to search for relevant information. The process of creating these alternative terms is called brainstorming terms or concept mapping.
EXAMPLE
African American AND Authors
Feel free to experiment and try out searches using your own words and see where that takes you. Remember, you can't break the Internet.