A characteristic of databases is that each record consists of fields. Examples of fields in bibliographic databases are author, article title, journal title, publication year, abstract and keywords.
Increased relevancy
Searching within a specific field is a useful way of narrowing a search result. If a search on meat quality, for example, gives too many references, you may limit the number of records by searching only in the title field. The idea is that when a term appears in the title of an article, the chance of that article being relevant to the subject is higher. Searching within one or more fields is also useful when you want to search for references on the subject hay without getting references by the author Hay.
Additional search criteria
Sometimes you may want to use other search criteria than subject. You might want to find articles:
- Written by a particular author
- Published in a particular journal
- Published in a particular year
In these cases, it is best to restrict your search to the specific fields to focus the results.
Most databases offer field searching in the advanced options. Otherwise consult the database field guide, the search tips or the help file of the database in which you want to search.