WGS 2123-Intro Women's & Gender Studies: Books

Many systems, like databases, library catalogs online, and Google, default to the "Keyword" search, which uses "natural language" or words. This term or set of terms can appear anywhere or any field in a record, such as title, author, subject, note, etc. The meaning of the words are not considered. For example, the terms "heavy metal" could pull results related to music or related to soil content. Here are some basic tips on how to use the Keyword search.

Tip: Used the Keyword search to combine an author and keywords in a title of his or her work. For example, combine the author's last name and a keyword of the title of the work. Note: The names are not case sensitive. Additionally, the search may pull other non-related titles if the terms entered appear in the item record.

• Example author: johnson and queer
• Example author:  sandberg and lean
• Example author:  browning and fate

Tip: Combine or group terms by enclosing them within quotation marks. 

• Example: "gender identity"

Grouping: Keyword search results are usually grouped by relevance to bring the most likely titles to the top of the list. Each group represents a similar level of relevance and results are sorted within the group by date or title. To get an ungrouped result set, use boolean operators to form a complex query. 

Tip: Using the boolean operator AND.

• Example: Women AND discrimination AND education

The "Subject" search uses a "controlled vocabulary" and focuses on subject terms or subject headings to define or to describe the information within the system. This type of search is targeted using specific terms or phrases that are highly relevant to the topic. It will locate all records on this subject and does not consider other fields, like the title or note fields as part of the search. This ensures the results are related and focused on the subject searched or the desired topic, which saves the user time.
Examples:

• Gender identity
• Gender nonconformity
• homophobia AND gender
• homophobia OR homosexuality
• mass media and sex
• mass media and culture OR mass media and race relations
• pay equity united states
• sex differences
• sex role in mass media
• sexism in education
• sexual abuse OR sexual assault
• transgender people
• transgender AND prejudices
• wages women
• Women and gender identity OR women and gender studies
• Women and war
• Women soldiers
• women suffrage

For additional information and to locate the Library of Congress subject authority headings and more, see the Library of Congress Authorities link below. 

For additional book titles not owned by NSU Libraries search the WorldCat databases. The WorldCat databases will locate items (books, dvds, and articles) from other libraries as well as items owned by the NSU Libraries.