Your research question may invite analysis from more than one academic discipline. Yet what is an academic discipline?  Although definitions vary, most scholars agree that an academic discipline shares the following characteristics:

• A specific focus of study;
• A specific research methodology;
• An accumulated body of knowledge that all practitioners share;
• Theories or concepts that help organize the shared body of knowledge;
• Specific vocabulary used to describe the shared knowledge;
• Usually, the discipline is taught in colleges and universities;
• New disciplines emerge when ruptures, disagreements, or new information can no longer be contained within the "old" discipline.

What do you think are the advantages of academic disciplines? Might there be any disadvantages?

Adding interdisciplinary layers to your concept mapping can help you see connections between your areas of interest and the experts asking those same questions from multiple perspectives.

Try creating a concept map with the following layers:

• Main Topic
• Brainstorm issues, questions, and ideas about the topic/artifact
• Who are the experts asking these questions?
• Which academic disciplines do these experts represent?
  • Where would you find these experts work/scholarship?
  • What would a source that answers this question look like?

• Use quotes to search for "exact titles".
• Use the filters on the right side to quickly narrow and navigate through search results.
• Use AND/OR/NOT to combine different words in a search.
• Use Advanced Search to perform more granular searches.
• Look at item details to find relevant subject headings.
• Sign in with your Puget Sound username and password to gain access to online sources, borrow items from other libraries, and more.

Collins Library, like most academic libraries in the United States, uses Library of Congress Subject Headings to describe the content of books. In many ways, subject headings are a form of tagging, in that they represent the content of the material and provide ways for you to efficiently locate more materials that are conceptually related. See QueerLCSH for a comprehensive list of Library of Congress subject headings. Keep in mind other databases may use different subject terms.

Here are some examples related to this course:

Homosexuality -- Religious aspects

Gender nonconformity -- Religious aspects

Masculinity -- Religious aspects

Gay people -- Religious life

Add a religious tradition or location to further specify your results, for example:

Homosexuality -- Religious aspects -- Islam

Gender nonconformity -- Religious aspects -- Judaism

Gay people -- Religious life -- United States

Subject headings tend to lag behind terminology used today, meaning some subject headings may be outdated or considered incorrect (and even offensive). For example:

Transsexualism -- Religious aspects -- Christianity

To do a subject heading search in PRIMO, go to the Advanced Search and change the drop-down menu to "Subject". 

In databases, a controlled vocabulary used to make sure that when researchers search databases for their disciplines, their searches are comprehensive. When an article is added to a database, it is tagged with specific subject headings, so that searchers don't need to worry about synonyms when searching. These terms can also be placed in a hierarchy, so that searchers can discover broader/narrower terms related to their topic.

In many of our databases, you can use the thesaurus to look up the preferred term and any related terms.

• Preferred Term: The name of the subject heading, and how the thesaurus prefers to refer to it.
• Scope Notes: A definition of the term.
• Entry Term / Use For / Variants: Synonyms of the term, or other narrower terms that redirect here because they don't have their own entry.
• Narrower terms: Other terms that are more specific examples of the current term.
• Broader terms: Other terms of which the current term is a more specific example.
• Related terms / See also: Other terms that are connected to the current term, but not in the "X is an example of Y" hierarchy

Looking at the questions and disciplines we've just gathered in our group concept map: 

1. Use the questions, subtopics, and keywords to identify 3 possible subject headings to search for in PRIMO or in a database of your choice.
2. See if those subject headings exist, and record any that might be useful in your searching.
3. Grade the controlled vocabulary's treatment of your topic through its subject headings from A to F. Think about:
   • Is the level of specificity appropriate for the discipline?
   • Are the "Use for" terms appropriate?
   • Are there any problematic hierarchies?
   • Are the "scope notes" clear?
   • Are the "related subjects" actually related, and are there any that are missing?
4. Use these subject headings to search the databases for your topics (later)