Search the online catalog by keyword, subject, author, or title. Starting with a keyword search can lead you to relevant subject headings. First do a keyword search and then browse the titles of the books retrieved. Select useful titles and look at the subject headings of the books selected. These subject headings can lead you to further books on your topic.
Keyword Search: natural language searching (like google)
"fashion designers" - use quotation marks to search for a phrase
costum* - truncation finds the root word and suffixes after the asterisk
Use ? to replace a single character anywhere in a word (wom?n near fashion)
dress near accessories - finds words close to each other, in any order
Subject Searches
Costume -- History -- 20th Century