Subject headings allow you to search for resources on a particular author or topic and are often more productive than keyword searches.
Keyword searches work best if you have multiple concepts or topics and need only a few books.
For a comprehensive subject search, search with subject headings as well as keywords.
Searching Omni
Start with a keyword search, but expect to revise it.
Keyword Searching TIPS|
Search Technique |
What It Does |
|
quotation marks |
Searches for exact phrase |
|
Truncation * |
Searches for all forms of a word |
|
Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) |
Lets you broaden or narrow your search |
For example:
aboriginal AND women AND "fur trade"
Think of any related terms or ideas that describe your topic.
(aboriginal OR indigenous OR native) AND women AND "fur trade"
When searching OMNI for books, use the facets located on the search results screen, to limit your search results to books & ebooks.
Once you have found a book that is relevant, you can sometimes use the subject headings for that item to find similar materials.
Subject headings are specific phrases that are assigned to items. Searching for subject headings can often give more relevant results than searching by keyword
Subject Headings
Quite often these headings are further qualified by topical, geographic, or chronological subheadings.
Indigenous women Canada History
Sex role New France History
Women History 19th century
Women Canada History 20th century
Women's rights United States History 19th century
Internet Archive
Search the "Texts" files for specific titles or books on particular subjects. Also Internet Archive Canada
The featured title is part of the series, Studies in Gender and History, which explores the centrality of gender, race, and class to a wide range of historical events, including the Canadian suffrage movement, the Great Depression, the internment of Japanese Canadians during World War II, the rise of twentieth-century consumer culture, and much more.
To find out what titles we have, search Omni in Advanced Search and limit to title and book-ebooks.
The Blackwell Companion series of books are particularly useful for historiography since they give authoritative overviews of the scholarship that has shaped the understanding of a given subject, as well as ongoing debates among historians.
Search Omni "blackwell companions" in combination with terms like "american history," "world history," gender, etc.
Some titles include:
Oxford Handbooks are a collection of handbooks across a wide range of subject areas. The series includes articles written by scholars at the top of their field.
Search Oxford Handbooks as a title in Omni to find our holdings.