Basic Search

The Basic Search is helpful way to begin research without specific information on hand. Results from a basic search of the Directory of U.S. Newspapers will yield Newspaper Title results from MARC Title/Subject Information and Historic Title Essays matching your search term(s).

Steps

• Go to Directory of US Newspapers in American Libraries.
• At the top right of the collection is a search bar.
• From the drop down, select This Collection.
• Add keywords or phrases into the search bar.
• Press enter or select the search icon.

For basic searches, results listed first are most likely to be relevant to your search. Results will appear higher in the list when they contain

• exact matches of your search terms;
• more of your search terms;
• repeated search terms;
• search terms that occur near each other.

Keep the following points in mind:

• The Directory of U.S. Newspapers contains newspaper titles so the most common basic search strategy is to search Newspaper Titles.
• Using quotation marks around your search term will limit your search for the "exact phrase" which can narrow your results.
• Omitting the quotation marks around your search term will search for "any of these words" which can broaden your results.
• Common words such as and, not, and the are ignored by the search engine.
• Case of letters is ignored. For example, Civil and civil are treated the same.
• Diacritic characters (accent marks, in non-English text) and other special characters may produce varied results, so to maximize potential results, conduct searches using plain (unaccented) letters in addition to letters with diacritics.