A researcher must be comfortable with the specialized language of the field of knowledge being searched because the authors and indexers of the information you seek will communicate in that language. Searching itself has a vocabulary of its own. See below for some definitions of the more common terms. Familiarity with international terminology, foreign languages, and alternative spellings are also important to ensure completeness. Even searching for common misspellings can be helpful to pickup all the information.
Descriptors give an indication of the content of the article, book or document.
Also called a file. Fields can include title, author, journal, publication date, index terms, abstracts, and text. Useful to quickly review the accuracy of results. Allows searching without learning the details of commands. Also called keywords.