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Spanish 301 - Advanced Spanish Writing

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The Advanced Search in the Duke BOOKS & MEDIA catalog allows you to combine "subject terms"/ terms about topics with authors, identities, and geographies.  Combine SUBJECT TERMS and KEYWORDS. Subject Terms are TAGS that pull together materials on a topic, and therefor help in finding related materials.

 

HELPFUL HINT - When doing a general keyword search, you may get more results than needed. Be sure to use the left hand FILTER OPTIONS to narrow down your search results. 

  • You can narrow down by format, topic, whether its's peer-reviewed and LANGUAGE!!

Library Catalog Subject Terms (About Topics)

A SUBJECT TERM is a manually added descriptive term: a librarian takes a book in hand, and determines what the book is about. They then add a subject term that says: this book is mostly about the following topic: Latinx, for example. Similar to tags on platforms like Instagram, Amazon and Netflix, which allow you to pull together similar results.

However, classification can carry bias, so using KEYWORDS in addition to subject terms can help with identifying diverse materials.

For instance, "Latinx" encompasses many identities, ethnicities, nationalities, and experiences. Design your search strings by combining two to three specific terms. Similar terms (synonyms) may narrow and down and yield results you are looking for!

  • Latino, Latina, Latin-
  • Hispanic
  • hispano/s
  • Chicano/a, Chicanx
  • Hispanic -American
  • Mexican-American
  • Afro-Latino/a
  • Cuban-American
  • Venezuelan-American
  • Puerto Rican American

Example: the Subject Term Hispanic-Americans pulls together over 5,000 books on the subject.

In addition, writing a term in it's original language may also lead to relevant search results. For example, if you're searching for information about "New Orleans" or "Louisiana", using the French spellings, "Nouvelle-Orléans" and "Louisiane" may give you more results.