HIST 150: Coffee and Modernity (Spring 2024)

• Start with keywords.
• Limit to books & ebooks.
• Pay attention to Subject terms!
  • Once you find the subject terms for your topic, you can find every recent book on your topic
• Any book in the catalog, even if it's at the Law library or Colonial Williamsburg Foundation library, can be picked up at Swem. Just use the request button in the catalog record.

Pay attention to subject terms

NOTE: once you know they subject terms for your topic, they'll work in every database, including WorldCat & America: History and Life

Try "Maple Syrup" AND (canadian OR canada) AND (identity OR culture OR history)

Be sure to use Caps for AND, OR, NOT when searching.

AND - searches for books and articles containing both terms. Example: Bread AND Culture

OR - searches for one of the words. Example: "soft drinks" OR soda

NOT - exclude a term. Example:  corn NOT maize

Parenthetical notes () - excellent for OR or NOT searches. Like a math equation, the database will do this part first.
Example: ("soft drinks" OR soda ) AND "social aspects"= search for social aspects of soda or soft drinkgs
Example: (corn NOT maize) AND culture = search for culture of corn but not maize.

Quotation Marks ""- Links words together in the search. Works best for phrases or proper names.
Example: "wheat beer"
Example: "energy drinks"
Warning: You might exclude results. A search for "digestive biscuits" will omit "digestives." 

Asterisk * - Allows you to search several word endings at once, without using OR.
Example: Virginia* will give you results for Virginia, Virginian, Virginians. 
Example: wom* will cover women, woman, womens, womanhood.
Example: Brit* will give you British, Britain, Brits.
Warning: You may get unexpected results. Brit* will also yield Brittany, Britons, and Britches. Virginia* will bring up articles on the Virginia opossum. Wom* will include wombat.