The Magic of Indexing
The Library organizes information by indexing information.
Let's take a look at how the online databases or the Online Library Catalog index information. The databases/catalog are made up of thousands of records, one record for each item in the database/catalog.
The record itself is called a citation. Each part, or field, within the record is searchable by the computer.
When you search by a field, the computer will "look" only in that field when it searches all of the items in the database to match your search.
Examples:
Author Search looks only in the author field
Title Search looks only in the title field
Subject Search looks only in the subject heading field
Date Search looks only in the date field
But . . . a Keyword Search looks for items anywhere in the record. It is the broadest search.
 
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