HIST 301: Historian's Craft (Homza, Spring 2025)

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

AND - searches for books and articles containing both terms. Example: children AND "united states" AND history

OR - searches for one of the words. Example: children OR childhood

NOT - exclude a term. Example:  NOT schools

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 children  
Example: (virginia NOT "West Virginia") AND children

Quotation Marks ""- Links words together in the search. Works best for phrases or proper names.
Example: "sunday school"
Example: "childrens toys"
Warning: You might exclude results. A search for "runaway children" will omit "run away children"

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.  Wom* will include wombat.

EBSCO

• Near Operator (N) will return results where words are close together, regardless of order
  • Women N5 colleges = women and colleges within 5 words of each other
• Within Operator (W) will return results where words are close together, in that order
  • Women W5 colleges = colleges within the last 5 words after women.

ProQuest

• Near Search, NEAR/# finds terms within # words apart in any order
  • woman NEAR/7 colleges = woman and colleges within seven words apart in any order
• Within Search, PRE/# or P/#, finds terms within # words apart in that order
  • woman PRE/7 colleges = searches were colleges is listed within 7 searches after woman

Gale

• Near search N# finds terms within # words apart in any order
  • woman N4 colleges = women and colleges 4 words apart
• Within search W# finds terms within # words apart in that order
  • woman W4 colleges = results where college is within 4 words after woman.

WorldCat

• Near (n#) finds both terms, in any order, within # words (only up to 25)
  • women n10 colleges = colleges and women within 10 words in any order
• Within (w#) finds both terms, in the order typed, within # words (only up to 25)
  • women w10 colleges = colleges no more than 10 words after women

GoogleBook 

• AROUND(#) in any order, within # words
  • woman AROUND(5) colleges = woman and colleges 5 words apart

British History Online

• "term1 term2"~#  finds both terms, in any order, within # words
  •   "women colleges"~5 =  woman and colleges 5 words apart
  • NOTE: this is weird. Usually "" around words searches as a phrase, but in this case the "" act as parentheticals. 

Some Database like Chronicling America have a special drop-down feature for proximity searches built into the search commands.