Subject headings are a controlled vocabulary. A single term or phrase is determined by an authority (Library Congress or a database vendor) to describe a subject. For example, try searching for the subject "roaring twenties" in West-Cat and see what you get.
Controlled vocabulary legislate the use of predefined, authorised terms that have been preselected by the designer of the vocabulary, in contrast to natural language vocabularies, where there is no restriction on the vocabulary.
To find books, go to the BOOKS tab in the box in the center of the library homepage.
1. In the blank for finding books enter the name or topic you are looking for.
For example: college student personnel
2. Check to make sure you are doing an Any word Anywhere (Keyword search). This will give the most and widest results, although not the most focused.
3. ​Review the list of titles in the results. Look at the titles to see the variety of perspectives the books reflect about the topic. Some titles will be closer to the topic than others.
Title: Culture of the university: governance and education.
Call Number: LD732.9 .A55 Status: Available
Title: Student development practices
Call Number LB2343.4 .S87 Status: Available
4. Find the titles that best fit the topic area you are interested in. In this case the book Student Development Practices is a better fit for a paper on the search topic because it shows both the practice and goals of college student personnel specialists.
5. Look under the title and check to see if the book is available.
6. Look at the call number to find the book in the library.