AND searches - type in all keywords, separated by spaces or an asterisk (baseball*soccer)
OR searches - type in the keywords, separated by a plus (baseball+soccer)
NOT searches - to exclude a keyword, add a hashtag before the keyword (baseball#soccer) -- will search for "baseball" and exclude results with "soccer"
Compound searches - use parentheses for create a compound search. For example: Olympics*(games#professional") will the retrieve results that contain the word "games" and "Olympics" but exclude any results with the word "professional"
Name searches - If you search for a personal name, put the name in quotation marks. ("General MacArthur")
Personal accounts, such as memoirs, journals, diaries, autobiographies, and oral history interviews are all important historical sources that can provide insight into particular events or life more generally.
In a library catalog, you'll find many published personal accounts. Subjects (or tags) on those books in the collection, may include terms like:
| Personal narratives | Correspondence | Sources |
| Diaries | Interviews | Documents |
Other keywords to use may include: account, autobiography, eyewitness, letters, memoir, oral history, or papers.
Example search:
"Pacific War" AND (memoir OR "oral history" or diary OR "personal narratives") AND American (21 results)
The collection includes many books whose editors have carefully selected documents and other sources related generally to World War II or particular theaters or experiences.
Some keywords to search include:
| sources | sourcebook | "documentary reader" | documents |
Some example titles include:
The United States in World War II: A Documentary Reader
The Pacific War Remembered: An Oral History Collection
World War II: the Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection [5 Volumes] by