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xu.tutor: Defining the Question

7. Searching by subject

Natural language frequently provides more than one word that is representative of a particular concept. For example, Afro Americans, Blacks, and Negroes are similar terms representing the concept, African Americans. In many databases, similar terms with similar meanings are grouped together under a single subject term (example).

Indexers working for a database producer will assign subject terms to each document in the database. This insures that all documents about the same topic will be assigned the same subject term, regardless of the keywords used in individual articles. Searching by subject includes similar terms.

The library's catalog, XPLORE, uses subject terms supplied by the Library of Congress (video clip).

Many research databases use subject terms created by the producers of the database (example).

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