Our Second Amendment

Subject Headings in Libraries

You may or may not know that different systems of book classification exist in libraries.

Our library, like most university libraries, uses the Library of Congress Classification system (the curious can learn more HERE) to determine how we organize our bookshelves.

Field-specific vocabulary used to classify where a book should go is called a subject heading, and each library uses these various subject headings to "tag" books and make them searchable. Your job is to find out the subject headings that will produce the results you want.

Reminder: the keywords and subject headings used for academic journals and newspapers do not follow the systems libraries use, meaning that more relevant and contemporary vocabulary might get used in a popular magazine, but would not show up as good of search results compared to the standardized subject headings.

Use these to begin your research in our library discovery tool, Primo:

• 2nd Amendment
• Firearms
• Gun control
• Shooting
• Small arms

Image at right taken from Primo, our library discovery tool, showing examples of subject headings and how many titles are within each. For example, "Gun control" has 17 titles if we select it.

There might be specific topics about firearms upon which you would like to focus, so here are some helpful steps to expand or limit your search results toward a chosen direction.

1. Type the phrase or wording about the subtopic around firearms in the search bar at the top of Primo. Make sure to select, also, whether you would prefer items to be from our local library, our partner libraries in I-Share, or from either (aka "everything.")
2. Scan the titles in the search results to determine if the types of materials found fit your general direction of inquiry.
3. Select one of the results that seems to fit your topic best and scroll down to where it shows subject headings as blue hyperlinks.
4. Look through them to see if any of them pertain best to your subject, maybe even opening several good options in new tabs.
5. Repeat this process as many times as you need to find the best phrases to conjure up the materials you need.

Keep track of these subject heading terms, as they can be used on other research databases, and even at other libraries!

For instance, the book featured at the left, Shots in the Dark: The Policy, Politics, and Symbolism of Gun Control, by William J. Vizzard from 2000 (linked HERE) provides us with several subject headings that cater to just social policy and the role government plays as decision-maker about firearms ownership.