The Library of Congress Subject Headings are a controlled vocabulary; they were developed by librarians to ensure that the material held by the Library of Congress was organized by subject in a systematic way. Most of the libraries in the United States use this standard of organization, and many international libraries have chosen to use the LCSH, also. In addition, many database providers have chosen to use the LCSH to organize their content - this means that using these subject headings may make it easier for you to locate appropriate information in a database by using these specific subject headings.
Subject headings may consist of more than one word.
While using the LCSH, please remember the following :
You may choose to use the hardcopy LCSH owned by the WCSU libraries, OR refer to the online resource.
Controlled vocabularies are knowledge organization systems which rely on pre-defined terminology for the description and arrangement of information. The terminology is selected by the creator of the vocabulary.
Specific fields of study may or may not have controlled vocabularies (chances are good, though, that any particular field of study will have its own controlled vocabulary or vocabularies).
Natural language - on the other hand - is the language you and I use on any given day, and is typically used for communication, whether written or spoken.
You can use controlled vocabularies, natural language, or a combination of the two, to conduct your research. Most of the databases available via WCSU (as well as metasearch engines like Google, Yahoo, Wolfram-Alpha, etc.) can be searched using natural language. However, you may find that using controlled vocabularies makes it easier for you to identify and locate the most appropriate content for your assignment(s).
