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Caught myself using the wrong search terms in library databases for a solid 3 months
I was working on a paper about urban farming in Detroit and kept getting zero results in JSTOR. Turns out I was typing in stuff like "city gardening" instead of "urban agriculture" and "food deserts" instead of "food access barriers." A librarian friend watched me search one day and pointed out how my everyday vocabulary was totally different from the academic keywords. She showed me the database's own thesaurus feature which lists official subject headings. Now I look up the controlled vocabulary first before typing anything. Has anyone else found a specific trick for bridging between casual words and what's actually indexed?
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colemiller18d ago
Ugh, that hits home. I did something similar when I was researching community gardens in Chicago. I kept typing "empty lots" and getting nothing, but "vacant land parcels" is the actual term they use. The librarian showing you the thesaurus is a game changer, that's how I finally learned the trick. Here's what I do now: I take my casual phrase, say it out loud, then think "what would a professor call this?" and search that instead. Have you tried just asking a librarian outright for the magic words before you even start? They usually know the exact controlled vocabulary off the top of their head, it saves you a lot of trial and error.
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morgan.joseph18d ago
Professor" vs "normal talk" works until you hit niche jargon they also don't teach.
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