HIST 2950 Sophomore Seminar in European History: Living in Modern Europe: Keywords and Subjects

Discover@MU (filtered to UM books) search example:

Line 1: Italy OR Italian
Line 2: risorgimento OR unification OR 19th century
Line 3: ______________________

Examples of strings for Line 3:

• film* OR cinema*
• journalis* OR news* OR press
• entertain* OR theat* OR litera*
• gender* OR masculin* OR feminin*
• educat* OR school*
• modern*
• religio* OR church OR secular*
• sources OR correspondence - change dropdown to the left of the box to SUBJECT

If you click on a book's title, you will usually see the book's table of contents.

There are certain words that appear in the subject headings of items in the UM LIBRARIES CATALOG that constitute primary sources.  The most important of them is sources, but there are others.

In the simple keyword search box, you can put such words after SU: in order to specify the SUBJECT field.

ex.: SU:Paris and SU:sources

In the advanced keyword search, you can put your search term(s) in the top box, and in the second box, put the word(s) you're using to locate primary sources in the next box, and change the drop-down menu to Subject:

Keywords that will help you find primary sources:

• sources - this keyword is associated with many official documents and records.
• correspondence
• sermons
• diaries
• personal narratives
• interviews
• quotations
• collections
• speeches
• manuscripts
• archives
• conduct manuals

Depending on the period being studied, it can also be helpful to limit your search by publication date.

More keywords identifying primary sources in Library of Congress Subject Headings

To find the papers of a historically prominent individual, use the Advanced Search.  Use the first line to specify the author (surname first, e.g., Jefferson, Thomas) and the second line to specify papers in the title.  You can also use the Advanced search to combine any of the above primary source oriented keywords with a particular author.