Based on the saturation and redundancy index issued by pre-research, this paper makes an empirical test on the literature retrieval under different retrieval methods. The results show that:  In single item retrieval, the efficiency of subject retrieval item is the highest; when using and to connect combined items, it should avoid adding Title retrieval item for retrieval, and the efficiency of subject and keyword in combined items is the highest; when using or to connect combined items, the efficiency of subject or title or keyword or summary is the highest. Based on the collaborative evaluation of saturation and redundancy, the retrieval efficiency of topic or title or keyword or abstract is the highest in combined retrieval.