 Hi, my name is Russell, and I'm a librarian at the University of Alabama. This video is the second in a series about the MLA International Bibliography, which contains accessible scholarly research pertaining to literature, language, linguistics, and folklore. It is the go-to resource for finding articles about these subjects specifically, with narrowly tailored results from the premier journals in these fields. In this video, I will cover the basics of subjects and subject headings, what they are, where they are, and how to use them in this database. Let's begin by talking about subjects. Within the MLA International Bibliography, there is an organized taxonomy that establishes categories of terms that indicate what sources are about. These terms are known as subjects, and they are assigned to records throughout this database. For instance, this record details a journal article that discusses symbolism within the short story Loat by Albert Camu. You can see multiple subjects outlining what this article is about. First, there are the classifications that denote the type of literature, the author of the work in question, and the work itself. Then, there are the subject headings, which are themes that are derived from the article's content and tagged alongside other book and journal articles that talk about similar issues. Let's try an example search where I find sources about Albert Camu, the subject author. I want scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles written about Albert Camu in French. Luckily, the Advanced Search option gives me the ability to conduct this kind of search. I'll enter Albert Camu in the first search box and French in the second search box. By using the Boolean operator AND, I'm ensuring that the results will include the author and the language. Now, I'll select a field for each search term. I'll choose DE for subject in the first box and SL for subject language in the second box. Wait, what happened? As you can see, we are getting English language results instead of French. This is because subject language refers to what the content of the sources is about rather than the publication information. If I re-ran the search and applied the field code for language of publication instead, I would get my desired results. The same principle applies to sources written by Albert Camu, using a field code that specifies him as the author rather than the subject. When using the field codes in an advanced search, take note of which codes focus on the subject of a source versus its publication information. Now, let's return to subject headings. There are several advantages of using subject headings as opposed to keywords for your search strategy, such as being able to locate sources that use unthought-of pseudonyms. To see a full list of all the preferred subject headings in this database, click on the MLA thesaurus. Here, you can search for any subject heading that might be attached to a source. Type in a term and select term begins with for words that have multiple phrases and suffixes, like the word class. Clicking the browse button reveals subject headings that start with class, like class consciousness, classical aesthetics, and classroom. By selecting term contains, you get subject headings that only have the word class by itself. You'll notice for the subject heading class that the MLA thesaurus recommends using the term social class when finding sources about socioeconomic categories in society. I can tick that box and add it to my search, or I can use the explode tool. The explode tool allows me to derive narrower search terms from a broader subject heading and also apply it to the search. After ticking the box and clicking add, it appends all of those narrower terms to create a very broad search. I could further add other subject headings to narrow or broaden my search or exclude certain terms altogether. And here are my results, which are exactly tailored to my area of research. That covers subject searching and using the MLA thesaurus. Thank you so much for watching. Be sure to click on the third video in this series to find out how to browse for authors and works in the MLA International Bibliography. If you have further questions, you can call us, email us, or visit ask.lib.ua.edu to ask a librarian.