HIST 150C: WWII Britain: The People's War (Spring 2024)

The hardest aspect of using Primary Source Databases is deciding which keywords to use. It's extremely difficult for a number of reasons:

• The meaning of words change over time.
• Different countries, even when they speak the same language, use different phrases, expressions, and terms.
• Some terms are too generic for targeted searches while others are too narrow.

For these reasons, it is important to think carefully about the keywords we use when looking for primary sources.

1. The fewer keywords the better.
   • This doesn't sound right. Surely the more word the better? Well, not really. The more words you use, the more likely you are to use anachronistic language.
   • The more words you use, the more false hits you may get.
   • Conversely, the more words you use, the more likely to exclude useful results.
2. Use limiting features built into the primary source databases to limit your results, not additional keywords.
   • Too many search results? Limit to a specific time period. Limit to a specific place. Limit to a type of resource.
   • Using specialized databases is a limiting feature in itself.
     • Example: If you're looking at popular magazines as a primary source, you don't need to use "popular culture" as a search term. If you're searching materials published after 1945, you don't to use terms like "After ww2" in your search.
3. Use Secondary Sources to help identify primary source keywords!
   • Other historians have studied this topic. Their work will give you an idea of what terms are being used in primary sources.