At this point in your careers, I strongly suggest starting right in WorldCat.
W&M Libraries has a very good history collection, but we don't have everything. Rather than searching twice -- once in our catalog and once in WorldCat -- I strongly suggest going right to WorldCat. WorldCat also has extremely detailed records, so you're MUCH more likely to find useful essays and chapters using WorldCat. Be Sure to use WorldCat First Search.
This link opens in a new windowBe sure to use Caps for AND, OR, NOT when searching.
AND - searches for books and articles containing both terms. Example: women AND "boarding school"
OR - searches for one of the words. Example: "boarding schools" OR "boarding school"
NOT - exclude a term. Example: NOT academies
Parenthetical notes () - excellent for OR or NOT searches. Like a math equation, the database will do this part first.
Example: (Virginia OR "West Virginia") AND "boarding schools" AND women
Example: (schools NOT academies) AND women = search for women's universities, excluding women's academies
Quotation Marks ""- Links words together in the search. Works best for phrases or proper names.
Example: "boarding schools"
Warning: You might exclude results. A search for "Captain Smith" will exclude all results for "Captaine Smith," which was the original spelling. "womens boarding schools" will exclude "womens Schools"
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: school* covers school, schools, schoolroom, schoolbook, schoolmarm, etc
Warning: You may get unexpected results. Virginia* will bring up articles on the Virginia opossum. Wom* will include wombat.
WorldCat contains over 540,000,000 records representing about 3,000,000,000 titles, so keyword searches can be a bit too broad.
As you start with keyword searches and find books that are of interest, pay attention to the Subject headings in the records.
For example, in books about the US Civil War, you'll find the official subject is United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865
Using the advanced search settings, search "united states" AND history AND "civil war, 1861-1865" to narrow your search to only books directly related to your topic.
Note that subject headings are something kinda' odd.
If I'm interested in universities during the Civil War, I'd use the subject "education, higher" not "higher education"
In fact, the Subject Search I'd want is
"united states" AND history AND "civil war, 1861-1865" AND "education, higher"
Some usages of the advanced options: