Arts and Health Promotion

Library systems use controlled vocabulary to catalog information and, ideally, make it easy to discover. These vocabularies were developed in the 19th century and often center colonial thinking, language, and perspectives. There are movements to "decolonize the stacks" and be more accurate in our descriptions, but the process can be slow.

Some recommendations for relevant and thorough results:

• use keywords (such as, "dance," "textile arts," "health," "well-being," etc.)
  • keywords are generally nouns
  • this type of search may help you identify the highly-specific Subject Terms
• use specific group names or places, when appropriate
• combine search terms using Boolean operators (and, or, not)
  • dance AND health AND indigenous women
• use all-text searching when possible (noting that this will always give more results)
• Subject Terms example (in EBSCOhost databases)