Effective Searching

When searching, it’s good to keep a few things in mind.

  1. Try lots of different terms. “Sylvia Beach letters” will produce different results than “Sylvia Beach correspondence”.
  2. The more words you use in your search, the fewer results will come back to you. “Woodrow Wilson” will produce fewer results than “Wilson”, but not all of the Wilsons that are produced may be about Woodrow.
  3. Using a minus sign (-) will exclude a term from results. If you’re interested in Ray Stannard Baker, but you keep getting results for James A. Baker III, a good search might be “Ray Baker -James”.

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