Help Using the ThesaurusWhy use the Thesaurus?Use HAPI's Thesaurus to look up authorized subject terms. By using the correct subject terms, you can take advantage of the extra work that HAPI's indexers have provided by reading the article and examining what it is about. By using the correct, authorized term you are much more likely to retrieve the full set of potential results. For example, if you were looking for articles about Brazilian film, the correct subject term is "Motion pictures Brazil." If you did a subject search for "Motion pictures Brazil," you would receive 205 citations for articles about film in Brazil. If you had not checked the thesaurus and entered "Brazil film" into the subject box, you would retrieve only 31 citations for articles. Using a keyword search for "Brazil film" would retrieve 66 citations, which is still very far from the 205 citations possible to retrieve by using the authorized heading.
See the Search Help page to learn which type of search will work best for you. How to use the Thesaurus.The HAPI Thesaurus lists all currently authorized subject headings and cross-references used in HAPI Online. The thesaurus is in English, but main headings have been translated into Spanish and Portuguese. Reading the ThesaurusThe HAPI Thesaurus is made up of a series of main headings, "See" references, "See also" references, and authorized subdivisions.
Sample view from HAPI's Thesaurus
Based on the sample thesaurus some possible authorized subject terms include:
By using the HAPI Thesaurus you can generate a number of authorized subject terms that can be used for subject searches that provide the most precise results. |
