HIST 150: Memories and Historical Narratives in China (Fall 2023)

Be sure to limit to books and ebooks.

If you're still stuck, you can also limit to chapters.

• Keep it simple!
  • Only use a few search terms at once, connected by AND
  • Example: Women AND education AND china
• Use nouns (people/place/thing/film) as search terms in the search
  • Example: "cultural revolution"
• Limit to books and ebooks.
• Use Boolean!
  • "cold war" AND politics AND China
• When you find a book on your topic, open it and pay attention to the subject terms!
  • There is a special subject heading called China -- Politics and government -- 20th century  that will let you find all books we own on this topic
• Skim books to see why they are in the results. Look at CHAPTERS in books too.
  • Frequently there will be a chapter in the book that is of interest.  For example "cold war" AND politics AND China brings up the book The Cambridge history of the Cold War Leffler, Melvyn P., 1945-; Westad, Odd Arne. 2010; Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press It doesn't look related at first but there are several chapters about China during the Cold War included in the book

Topic: Politics of Music in 20th century China.

1. Identify keywords
   1. politics ; music; China; 20th century
2. Consider synonyms.
   1. politics, political
   2. music, maybe arts?
   3. 20th or twentieth 
3. Use Boolean searching to create a basic search command
   1. Politic* AND music AND china
4. Search! Look at the results and revised based on feedback from database.
   1. Example, the instead of "politics" the database suggests "social aspects"
   2. Pay attention to subject headings like Popular music-- Social aspects-- China

If you're not getting good results, try the same search in the article databases-- it may be a narrow topic better suited to articles.

If you cannot find any books on your topic, use WorldCat to find books we don't own.
The W&M Libraries will order it via Interlibrary Loan at no charge, and you'll borrow it from us without issue. 
Don't limit yourself to books just in our collection!