Searching by Subject

When to search by subject

You can use a subject search to advantage when you know the topic of interest, but are not familiar with authors or titles of documents about that topic.

How the search system operates

This system scans the collection in two ways.

1. It searches the titles of all documents to identify those containing the subject term(s) that you entered.

2. It searches the subject field, looking for the term(s) that you entered.  Most documents in the collection have been subject-indexed, based on terms in the thesaurus.  So if you have used a subject term from the thesaurus the search system will retrieve all articles that indexers have identified with that term.

Tips on searching by subject

Single keywords

Find documents containing a single term in any field (i.e., author, title, subject, journal) of the citation.  Examples:

diffusion
biotechnology

Keyword phrases

Find documents containing a specified phrase in any field by surrounding it with quotation marks.  Examples:

“ethical issues”
“desktop publishing”
“farm journals”

Cross-subject searching

Remember that every document in this collection involves communications related to agriculture, so contains elements of both broad subject areas.  Therefore, cross-subject searches may be highly useful to you.

 Here’s how you can narrow or focus your search for documents in the Documentation Center by using more than one subject term or phrase in a search.

To search for multiple subject terms, enter an “AND” or “OR” between the terms.

For example, if you want to identify documents about the role of farm broadcasting, you enter two terms under Subject in the search form, as follows:

role AND “rural broadcasts”

You type in the first term (role), then AND, then the second term (“rural broadcasts”) within quotation marks because it is a specified keyword phrase.

If you are uncertain about what subject terms to use, check the thesaurus by clicking on the thesaurus hot link.

The following examples show several ways in which you can carry out cross-subject searches.  These terms are selected from the thesaurus.

adoption AND computers
listenership AND farmers AND india
“traditional media” AND africa
attitudes AND pesticides
“rural-urban communication” AND  “food safety”
history AND “farm journals”
advertising AND dairy