Advantages and Disadvantages of Subject Searching

Subject searching only has a couple advantages:

• A professional has examined the actual item to determine what it is about and then assigns subject headings. Therefore when you search by subject, you can be assured that the item is really about that topic
• Once you know the subject heading for your specific topic, everything that is primarily about that topic should be listed under the same subject heading

Subject searching also has some disadvantages:

• The words used in the subject heading are often not what you would expect (Vietnamese Conflict instead of Vietnam War)
• You have to type the subject phrases exactly (World War 1939-1945 United States instead of World War II)
• Most words have many synonyms and related words (AIDS / Aquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome / HIV)
• Often the subject headings use language that has become outdated (motion pictures instead of movies)
• Subject headings cannot address the contents of individual sections of a work, such as collected essays in a book. The subject heading will reflect the book as a whole

For these reasons, unless you are looking for information about a particular person (the search term being the person's name), keyword searching is recommended for all other types of topic searches.