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HIST 150: Writing Early American Lives (Fall 2023)

Finding Books at W&M

A good place to start is the library catalog, which searches across all the libraries at W&M (including law school & business school), and also includes the materials at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation library.

General tips:

  • Stick with Keywords connected by AND.
  • Keep an eye open for Subjects.
  • Limit by publication date.
  • Limit to books and ebooks.

For this class:

Start by searching your individuals name in quotation marks.

"James Blair"
"Richard Bland"
If you're looking at someone with a generic name, add an extra keyword with AND
"John Smith" AND Jamestown

Limit the results to books, ebooks, chapters.

For books with context about the individual's time period, try only a few keywords:
Virginia AND history AND jamestown

Books Beyond WM

If you're really stuck, you can search in WorldCat and order books (Free of charge) using ILL