What is a keyword search?
A keyword is a word that identifies your subject. Type a likely word or words into the search box, and then SWAN finds items with that word or words in the titles, subject headings, and notes about library items. Librarian’s hint: You often get better results with more specific keywords. If you want items about heart disease, search “heart disease” instead of “health” or “medicine.” Try broader or more general terms if your searches with more specific terms are unsuccessful. Keyword search finds more items than Subject Headings search, which require the use of controlled Library of Congress subject headings (known mostly by librarians). Instructions and samples of Keyword search may be found at http://swan.mls.lib.il.
The keyword search function searches the commonly used metadata fields of each learning object in the selected repositories. The keyword search will return a positive match for all objects that contain the search term as part of the title, description or competency. This means you can actually use the keyword search to search by competency code. Note that the keyword search does not search within the learning objects themselves, which helps limit the number of false matches.
A keyword search is a done by typing in the way you would normally speak. When you are searching for something on Google you are doing a keyword search. In the library catalog, a keyword search will search in a many different fields, including, title, publisher, subjects, chapter name, etc. What Will I find with a Keyword Search? Because it is a natural language search, the word “and” is inserted between your search words. If you do a keyword search using Civil War the catalog will search for both “Civil” and “War” you will get records where both words “Civil” and “War” appear in the record. You will get sources relating to the American Civil War, you will also get items about the Spanish Civil War, World War II, Vietnam War, etc. It may even find items not related to any war. When is a Keyword Search Helpful? Keyword searching is most helpful when you are beginning your research. It is a broad search and will cover a lot of material. If you don’t know where to start, do a keyword sear
A keyword search allows terms or phrases to be combined. Use keyword searching when you are unsure of the exact title, author, or Library of Congress Subject Heading. The Keyword option also allows searches to be limited by language, date, material type (video, book, music audio, music score, picture, etc.), location (NW Horace Mann Library, NW Owens Reference, NW Owens Archives, NW Owens Juvenile, etc.), and Publisher. Items can also be sorted by date, alphabetically, or by relevance.
To search an electronic catalog or index by having the program search for terms (keywords) provided by the user or client. Keywords do not have to be standardized subject headings, and a keyword search often searches all data fields for the terms (eg, “winter” as a keyword might retrieve items with Winter in the author field as well as items with “winter” in the text or title). Keyword searching often allows flexible and powerful features such as Boolean operators, truncation, and field searching.
