Policy Researcher Tutorial

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2. Search Strategies for Historical Topics

Search strategies for historical topics may need to take into account the phenomenon that language changes over time. For example, to comprehensively find histories on African Americans, you may need to use the population terms used during the time period(s) you are studying. For example, "Negro or Colored" was common before 1960 and "Afro-Americans" was in vogue during the 1960s and 1970s. The words are considered synonyms of the current term "African Americans" or "Blacks" and therefore need to be bracketed within parentheses such as in the following example of a keyword search:

(Negro or Colored or Afro-Americans or African Americans) and schools

The same principles apply to TBLG issues, where interdisciplinary research strategy requires the use of discipline-specific vocabularies, which have evolved over time:

(queer or transgendered or bisexual or lesbian or gay or same sex) and social work

Changes in Internet Coverage:

It has generally been more difficult to find historical materials than current information on the Internet. However, an increasing number of projects are working to digitize primary sources from the past so searching is becoming easier. Take a look at the Library of Congress, American Memory for details of its digitization projects. For example, see World War I and 1920 Election ~ Recordings American Leaders Speak: Recordings from World War I and the 1920 Election.

These provide access to important documents, photographs and images of American political and social history. Google is digitizing vast library collections, including the University of Michigan's, making available a number of public domain books that were never subject to copyright or whose copyright has expired. They can show every page because these books are in the public domain. (For books not in the public domain they only show small snippets of the work unless the publisher or copyright holder has given them permission to show more.)
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Document Custodian: Sally Haines  Last revised: 28 July 2008