Subject Searching in the Library Catalog

You'd think you could enter any topic as a Subject search in the library catalog. However, the Subject search uses special terms to organize books by subject. These are called Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH for short). If you enter your keywords as a Subject search, you may not get much back. For example:

If you entered a Subject Heading search for: acquired immune deficiency you would get no books!

But if you searched using the LCSH term, AIDS (Disease) you'd see the library has around 190 books.