Glossary: Keyword Searching

Keyword searching is used in computer search engines, including TOPCAT, online indexes, and even web search engines such as Google.

Keyword searching says "find this word and show me what it appears in". We use it when we don't know what we're going to find, but we know that if it's on our topic it will likely have this word in it somewhere.

What we find depends on the database we're searching. In TOPCAT we find descriptions of books, journals, government publications, etc. that we have in our library. In indexes we find descriptions of articles (citations).