Along with call numbers, subject headings are assigned to each book. In most academic libraries, the controlled vocabulary from which the subject terms are selected, comes from a set of books called Library of Congress Subject Headings.

Let's look at the following example from the CSCC online catalog:

Do you see the subject headings in the example? These are the Library of Congress Subject headings for this book. They provide a valuable key to finding other books on the subject you're researching. When you're working in the online catalog, you can click on one of these links to do further subject searches using the headings found in this record.

(Special note: don't try to click the links in the example. They're only a picture of what the real web page looks like!)

Because the wording of the subject headings is so tightly controlled, sometimes you might prefer to do a word or keyword search instead.