Search Tips

This search engine is a Google Programmable Search Engine that searches the whole web, but it emphasizes results from several hundred sites that we selected. It also eliminates results from other sites.

That means that your search will bring up more primary sources than a usual Google search.

Focused Search

If you click the Focused Search tab in the search results, you will only see hits from a list of sites that we have included instead of all of Google's indexed websites.

Add Quote Marks

Use quote marks if any concept is more than one word.

Examples Searches:

"Malcolm X"

"gender roles"

"environmental protection agency"

Add More Words

If you get irrelevant results, add more words to describe your topic or specify the type of source.

Primary sources can be almost anything.

Examples of Primary Source Types

advertisements, audio and video recordings, autobiographies, cartoons, court records, diaries, government reports, illustrations, legislative documents, letters, literary works, movies, newspaper articles, oral histories, pamphlets, photographs, posters, speeches, statistics, works of art, and more examples...

Example Searches:

"Malcolm X" speech

"gender roles" 1950s america advertising

"environmental protection agency" Nixon documents

Search Specific Domains or Websites

You can also search only certain website domains (e.g. .com, .org, gov) or specific sites.

So if you see a pattern in your results, such as better results .edu or .gov sites or a lot of results from the Library of Congress, you can narrow your search.

You will use Google's site: operator. This means using the word site followed by a : [colon] and the domain or site with no spaces between any of the parts.

Example Searches:

"Malcolm X" speech site:.org

"gender roles" 1950s america advertising site:.edu

"environmental protection agency" Nixon documents site:http://loc.gov

"Malcolm X" speech site:https://www.youtube.com