Keyword Searching
All databases provide keyword searching. When you perform a keyword search, you are actually asking the computer to scan all words in a record, including the title, abstract, author, and other fields.
When you searched ND Catalog for "leprechaun", the computer scanned all words in the catalog record and retrieved results similar to the ones below. Most of the results include the word "leprechaun" in the title but why is "The king with horse's ears and other Irish folktales" included? Mouse over the image below to see details of that book record.
Keywords are everyday terms used to describe a topic and in many cases will retrieve results that are right on target. However, sometimes keywords do not produce the most effective results. You will learn more about different search types for all databases later in this module.
