This short tutorial will show you how to use the Catalogue to find background information for historical research.
Why use background information?
--- Example topic
"Nurses who served in the First World War"
---
You can use the skills you learn here to search a range of catalogues.
Let's get started!
How to use this tutorial
• Click Advanced Why?
You are now ready to search.
The example topic is:
We want nurses and "first world war" to be the main subject of the items we find.
Lets replicate the search in the image below:
Search Tips Explained
How many results did you get?
Let's review our results.
Each catalogue record provides a description of the item including:
Look at Subjects.
Why are Subjects useful in historical research?
Wars or conflicts could be described in many ways.
Click on the catalogue record above.
Enter the phrase used to describe the First World War in the catalogue record above.
Check answer
What other words could be used for nurses?
Let's incorporate these additional words to broaden our search.
1. On the top of your screen select Modify Search
2. Delete the existing search from the search boxes to start again.
3. Open the image below and replicate our new search.
4. Click Submit.
Search Results
Browsing Subjects is another way to discover items on the same topic.
From your search results:
1. Click onto the title of any item
2. Click onto one of the Subjects in that Catalogue record.
2. Browse the list of Subjects for other potentially useful subjects.
3. Click a Subject to find books/ resources for that subject.
Why are Subjects useful?
Thank you for completing this Library tutorial. So that we can evaluate and improve our tutorials, we would appreciate if you could provide anonymous feedback.
For more search tips relating to historical research see
Finding Historical Information guide.
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