labor migra* and 20th century and europ*
immigra* and (england or brit*) and diaries
(emigr* or immigra*) and (ireland or irish)
su:sources and (england or brit*) and immigr*
passenger* and 19th century
frontier OR pioneer
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.: immigra* and 19th century 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:
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 MERLIN 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.
The above search looks through records for books, not full text. By default, you will be searching "Full View" works only. These are books that are old enough to be out of copyright or are in the public domain for other reasons (e.g., U.S. federal government documents).
To search full text of books, or full text in conjunction with one or more fields of the catalog record, use the Hathi Trust Advanced Full-Text Search.
Google Books contains the full text of books and magazines provided by libraries and publishers. Materials that are out of copyright (generally pre-1925) can be viewed online. For more recent books, Google Book Search functions as a detailed index. Books identified may be available at MU, via MOBIUS, or may be requested through ILL@MU.
The Advanced Search of Google Books allows you to search for books containing your words in the full text that also meet some criterion for other search fields such as author or title.
See also A Guide To Google for detailed search hacks for Google's web search.
