National History Day

Search Research@UWW to locate books, articles, government documents, videos, and more. 

In the Search box, type one or more search terms that define your topic. HINT! Use a term that identifies a specific kind of primary source, such as:

• diaries
• correspondence
• interviews
• sources
• "personal narratives"     
• photographs
• "pictorial works"
• plates

Narrow your search to Books, Media & more (UW Whitewater).

Combine multiple search terms with a capital AND to find items that contain both terms.

                  Example: "personal narratives" AND Vietnam

Truncate (shorten) words with an asterisk * to find all words that begin with a root word.

                  Example: Type interview* to find....... interview, interviews, interviewed, interviewing

Need More Help Identifying Primary Sources?

               Use the Genre facet on the left of the results page and check items that are likely to be primary:

Subjects are more exact than keywords for searching. A subject is the exact term a library cataloguer will use to describe a book or other item. You can find more items about your specific topic if you look at the Subjects.

Look at the example below to see that the exact subject for the Vietnam War is  Vietnam War, 1961-1975.  Your search for Vietnam War materials will work better if you use "Vietnam War, 1961-1975"

Here's how to search using Subjects: 

1. Search for your topic by keyword as shown above.
2. Choose one of the most relevant (about your topic) items on the list.
3. Click the Details tab.
4. Look at the Subjects.
5. Now you can write down or copy subjects that might be useful to search later. Write them down because there are often more than one you might want to use! OR...
6. OR Click one of the subjects to see a new list of other items with the same subject term.