Subject terms: Does anyone use them anymore?
Are subject terms still of any use to anyone when they are searching online resources? I know that controlled vocabulary like MESH have their place but I have found the subject terms in a discovery layer like Summon quite useless. Let's say you are searching for resources on attachment theory. If you run this search in Summon the subject terms it provides are so broad they are useless, e.g. article, psychology, social sciences, electronic books, education, studies, teaching, research. Some of them, e.g. article, are not even what you could call subject terms. The other problem is you cannot "explode" these terms to find sub topics. So there is no use in using them to refine your search - there are far better ways of doing this like using Boolean's.
Subject terms in other databases can be more useful. Let's look at ABI/INFORM as an example. I ran the same search again and had a look at the subject terms offered. While non of them could be "exploded," many of them were able to help refine the search. Say I was researching how attachment theory applies in the workplace, I could add the subject term employment which refines my results from 41,000 down to 486. Employment is a very broad term however and this is approach is a little hit and miss. What about including other subject terms like management, organizational change, labour market? But by adding these all you're doing is broadening your search instead of refining it.
Subject terms on the library catalogue are more useful and I do use them from time to time. I ran the same search again on the catalogue and chose one of the records that came up: Attachment theory and psychoanalysis. It came up with 6 subject terms. I clicked on the first one: Attachment behaviour. This in turn produced some narrower terms, e.g. Dependency (Psychology), Place attachment. Dependency produces another narrower term: Autonomy(Psychology), which then leads to a broader term: Emotions, which then of course produces dozens of narrower terms, e.g. Anger, Anxiety. Looking at these subject terms is a good way to find synonyms (or similar concepts) for a topic and help get you thinking about it. So for example with attachment theory there is place attachment. You could then add this to your search in Summon or Google Scholar, e.g. "attachment theory" place.
Subject terms in other databases can be more useful. Let's look at ABI/INFORM as an example. I ran the same search again and had a look at the subject terms offered. While non of them could be "exploded," many of them were able to help refine the search. Say I was researching how attachment theory applies in the workplace, I could add the subject term employment which refines my results from 41,000 down to 486. Employment is a very broad term however and this is approach is a little hit and miss. What about including other subject terms like management, organizational change, labour market? But by adding these all you're doing is broadening your search instead of refining it.
Subject terms on the library catalogue are more useful and I do use them from time to time. I ran the same search again on the catalogue and chose one of the records that came up: Attachment theory and psychoanalysis. It came up with 6 subject terms. I clicked on the first one: Attachment behaviour. This in turn produced some narrower terms, e.g. Dependency (Psychology), Place attachment. Dependency produces another narrower term: Autonomy(Psychology), which then leads to a broader term: Emotions, which then of course produces dozens of narrower terms, e.g. Anger, Anxiety. Looking at these subject terms is a good way to find synonyms (or similar concepts) for a topic and help get you thinking about it. So for example with attachment theory there is place attachment. You could then add this to your search in Summon or Google Scholar, e.g. "attachment theory" place.
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