 At this point in your academic career, Penelope hopes you have used a database from the library to search for information, such as JSTOR, the MLA, International Bibliography, Eric, or one of the many other resources available to you. Penny knows that sometimes it's really easy to find an article that pertains to her topic. She often uses JSTOR to search for information. She types in a keyword or two and retrieves lots of results. Sometimes the first result is exactly what she needs. But, more often, this isn't the case. Instead, she finds herself retrieving so many articles it can be overwhelming. In this video, Penny is going to show you how to use the thesaurus feature available in some databases to help focus your searches. First, let's talk about the word thesaurus. We know what that is. We can type in a word and retrieve similar words. So, a word like motivation, we could also use the word catalyst or inclination. Most likely, you have used keywords to search a database. So, while searching the MLA International Bibliography, you might type in the word imagery. A keyword search will pull up every record that contains the word imagery, even if the word is mentioned only one time at the bottom of an article. Due to this, a keyword search sometimes results in a lot of non-relevant sources. The thesaurus feature in a database uses subject headers to group similar articles together so that all the articles about imagery, for example, are grouped together in one search. Another way to think of it is that thesaurus contains the language of the database. You may have noticed nearly every source you retrieve in the MLA database provides a list of relevant subject headings. These are connected to the thesaurus feature. For Penelope, she uses the thesaurus to translate her keywords into subjects. In other words, she finds out what language the MLA database uses to make her searches most effective. Here, she types in the word imagery. Imagery appears first in the list. If she clicks on it, she will retrieve a list of broader and narrower terms related to imagery. She places a check mark next to the box and clicks add. Automatically, her term is exploded. This means all of these additional narrower and broader terms are added to her search. If Penny does not want to include all these additional words, she has to uncheck the explode box. Now, her search results contain every source in which imagery is a subject of that source. Comparing this search to the keyword search, she has significantly less results to work with. From here, Penny might add additional keywords, add further subject headings, or use the names as subjects feature to add authors to her search. That thesaurus is a helpful feature to make the most of your database searches. However, this tool is not available in all resources. JSTOR and Project MUSE, for example, do not use a thesaurus. However, they do provide other ways to focus a search, such as narrowly to a research area. Let's review. The thesaurus is used in a database to organize sources and help you, the researcher, retrieve more relevant results. Use this feature to translate your keywords into the appropriate terminology for the database. Keep it basic or use the explode feature to open your search. The use of subject headings is a powerful searching tool and one that is considered advanced. Penny still finds value in using keywords, but she has also found great value in learning the proper terminology for the database.