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HISTORY 201: The Historian's Craft: Cold War on Ice: 1972 (Fall 2022) : Find Articles and Dissertations

History Databases, General Article Indexes and Dissertations

Searching Within Databases

This tutorial shows you how to search for articles in article databases.  It shows you how to use AND to combine terms, limit to articles from scholarly journals or by date of publication, use subject headings and abstract to find keywords, find full text of articles, and use tools to generate or export citations. 

Search Tips

  • Use AND to combine different words to find all those words, in any order.  
    •  French Revolution AND women
  • Use OR to combine similar words or synonyms or variations
    • women OR gender
  • Use quotation marks ( " ") to search words as a phrase
    • "French Revolution" 
  • Use an asterisk ( * ) to find varied endings of words and singular and plural forms.
    • femin* to find feminine, feminism, feminist
  • Use a question mark (?) to find one missing letter
    • wom?n to find women, woman, or womyn
  • Look at Subjects to find additional keywords and use them to find relevant and specific results.
  • Look for an option to limit to Academic Journals on the left side of search results in most databases