Online Access to Primary and Secondary Sources
Many valuable primary and secondary sources are freely accessible on the Web and can be found through search engines like Google. But probably most high-quality historical sources are proprietary, and you must pay to see them or access them through libraries that pay for them. An example of a proprietary primary source is the newspaper, Times of London Digital Archive, 1785-1985; a proprietary secondary source, the journal, East European Politics and Societies.
Searching for Sources
Successful searching entails using the right terms and limiting or expanding the number of results.
Regarding terms, if the terms you first use do not retrieve what you seek, use other terms, e.g., instead of 'revolution,' use 'rebellion' or 'uprising.'
In searching, the terms you use are nouns, either common nouns or proper nouns. Common nouns designate all of the members of a class, e.g., president or war. Proper nouns designate a particular member of a class, e.g. Barak Obama or World War II.
There are many ways to limit or expand search results. In general, adding search terms limits results. Replacing proper nouns with common nouns expands results.
Computer search systems normally retrieve so many results that you more often need to limit rather than expand your search results. Search systems provide fields of information about results that you can use to reduce results. E.g., you can search a newspaper by a date or range of dates like 10/23/1956 to 11/10/1956, or you can search a database of magazines by a type of publication like editorial cartoon. Such searches will retrieve only items that are within the range of dates or are only editorial cartoons.
