Introduction to Research

Searching by Keyword allows you to use the “natural language” you’d normally use to describe a topic (or with terms specific to the late 18th century through the pos-Reconstruction era if you're searching in a primary source database), combined with the operators AND, OR, and NOT. Scan the results to identify the official subject headings (tags). Be flexible by trying several keywords as shown below on the "10 Steps to Successful Searching" handout.   Example:

(international OR foreign) AND (United kingdom or UK or England) AND (trade* or business or investment)