Self Assessed Question 3.4 Consider a database of your own choice, one that you have used before and that you are able to access locally. 5.2 Selecting terms Having chosen your sources, you need to consider which terms you will use to search them. You need to proceed from individual concepts to specific terms. These terms may be the actual words that you have chosen. They may, however be more technical or scientific terms preferred by database tools such as indexes and thesauri.
Electronic databases can help to identify the most appropriate terms and any alternatives.
The terms are called subject headings or descriptors. They are used to apply consistent subject headings to articles which describe the same concept, but in a variety of ways. These preferred terms also take into account plurals and variable spellings. Indexers will usually assign several descriptors to any one article. They make up part of the article record and are added to the database so that they can be searched for in the same way as any other part of the text or bibliographic details.