If you work from the bibliography of the subject encyclopedia, the title searching you learned in Worksheet One would sufficient for you to locate a book. But how do you find books on your topic went you don't have a list of titles to work from? Or the name of an author? 

The answer is to search by subject. On many levels this is straight-forward process. The only problem is you have to use words, and in the English language words are slippery, with different meanings in different contexts.
 

The Many Meanings of Words

Imagine your friend makes this simple statement: “I broke my leg.” What exactly does that mean, since the “leg”* is composed of three bones, the femur, the tibia, and the fibula? And humans have two legs, so did your friend mean the right femur or the left femur? Right tibia or left tibia? Right fibula or left fibula? 

Do you drink pop or soda? Do you drink Pepsi, Coke, or RC? Maybe you just drink cola? Or maybe you don’t drink carbonated beverages? But what about mineral water? And is tonic water a soda?

If you are a nurse working in a maternity ward during a graveyard shift and a husband comes rushing out of his wife’s room and screams “labor” what is about to happen? And if you are husband of a pregnant woman in a maternity ward and you approach the front desk to hear two nursed discussing “labor” in quiet voice could they be talking about a strike?

The next section will explain how the library world attempts to solve the slippery problems of language.