Keyword searching is how you typically search web search engines (like Google). Think of important words or phrases and type them in to get results.
Library databases are made up of individual records which correspond to information about a particular journal article, book or book chapter. These records contain a lot of information that is divided up into fields containing specific pieces of bibliographic information. Common fields include:
In a keyword search, the term(s) entered into the search box are looked for in all fields in an individual record.