Biology Research Tutorial: The Difference between Keyword and Subject Searching

The Difference Between Keyword and Subject Searching

The following table provides a brief comparison of keyword searching vs. subject searching:

Keyword Searching	Subject Searching
Searches in any number of fields and/or the full text of documents	Searches only in the subject/descriptor field
Any significant words/phrases can be considered keywords	Search terms must come from the database's thesaurus
Number of items retrieved potentially large	Number of items retrieved potentially smaller
May retrieve irrelevant items	High degree of relevancy