How can students use the Voyager Catalog to find materials in the Library collection that are more precisely relevant to their research?

Let’s say that you are interested doing research on Gender issues in Sports. Start with an Advanced Search of the Voyager. From the Proctor Library homepage click on Find Books and More link, then click the Advanced Search tab.

Conduct a combined search (Keyword Anywhere) for Sports AND Gender:

On the next screen you will see several items, both electronic and hard copy, that are in the Library collection with both keywords “Sports” and “Gender” as part of their records. After browsing the titles, select one that at this point appears to be relevant to your research on the basis of the title. For our demonstration here, we selected the title Female Gladiators: Gender, Law, and Contact Sport in America.

On the screen you will notice a bibliographic record of the book, plus an expanded Library of Congress Subject(s) headings list for this particular title (see figure below). This is valuable information for your research as you now can quickly access Voyager limiting your results to books dealing with more precise/relevant subjects based on the Voyager module’s own search vocabulary:

To enter more precisely into the Voyager module for information on Gender issues in Sports, click the hot-linked Subject heading Sports for women--Social aspect--United States. Voyager will now conduct a brand new search for items with the subject headings of Sports for women--Social aspect--United States. The next screen offers a list of Library of Congress subject headings, indicating the number of books in the Library dealing with the particular subject (see figure below). From here you are able to browse the various subject headings by using either the “previous” or the “next” buttons:

If you click on any of subject headings, say, Sports for women--Sociological aspects (see figure above), you will see the record of a book dealing with that subject(s), Women, Sport, and Culture by Cheryl L. Cole (see figure below):

Summary: By taking advantage of the Subjects(s) headings for any given bibliographic record in the Voyager module, the researcher can enter more deeply, and more precisely into the Library catalog for relevant titles on any given subject by browsing through the subject headings.

Of course, if you still find yourself in need of more information, you can ask one of the Reference Librarians for assistance. If you are researching from outside the Library, call (904) 819-6331.