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The University of Massachusetts Amherst
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JUDAIC 221 - Interfaith Encounters: Jews and Christians in the Early Modern World

Group Activity

Group activity - Finding Collections of Primary Sources

1. Pick one of the search strings below and copy it into the Discovery search bar on the Libraries homepage.

(Jew* OR Judaism) AND (DE "*archival resources")
(Jew* OR Judaism) AND (DE "*catalogs")
(Jew* OR Judaism) AND (DE "*illustrations")
(Jew* OR Judaism) AND (DE "*sources")

The first piece of each search string tells the search engine that Jew, Jews, Jewish, or Judaism needs to be present. The second piece stipulates what kind of primary sources you are looking for.

As a reminder, DE tells the search engine to look for subject heading matches. Since some subject headings have multiple pieces, using the wildcard operator (*) tells the search engine that it doesn't matter what shows up before the format type (ex. catalogs, source, etc.).

2. Review the results of the search and discuss the following questions:

  • How many results did you receive?
  • How useful do the results look?
  • How many results on the first page fit within the time period covered in this course?

3. Scroll back up to your search string. Add another keyword connected with to your original search with AND. This is an opportunity to narrow your search geographically or to a particular time period.

  • For example: (Jew* OR Judaism) AND (DE "*sources") AND Italy
  • For example: (Jew* OR Judaism) AND (DE "*sources") AND "early modern"

4. Review the results of the search and discuss the questions from earlier:

  • How many results did you receive?
    • If your search returned zero results, it's okay. You may not have had many results to start with. Adding an additional keyword may also have made your search too specific. You can try different keywords, especially broader ones.
  • How useful do the results look?
  • How many results on the first page fit within the time period covered in this course?

5. Find one book of primary sources that you could see yourselves exploring for the final essay assignment. This can come from the results of one of your previous searches or a new search string that you develop. Prepare to share how you found this book and briefly explain why you picked it.

Tip: You can use limit your results to books by selecting "Books" and "Ebooks" under the Format heading on the left side of the results page.

Search the Libraries' Collections

Jewish and Religious Studies Databases

Keyword Searching Tips

Keywords

  • Determine the most important and unique from your research topic.
    • Common words such as effect or period are less useful than specific words such as religion or cuisine.
  • Toss out extraneous words such as question words and prepositions.
    • For example: How did rabbis perceive Jewish participation in Christian festivals? --> rabbi* AND Jew* AND ("Christian festival*")
  • Use synonyms and related words as keywords.
    • For example: holiday --> festival, Yamim Tovim
  • Add broader or more narrow terms as keywords.
    • (more narrow) Easter - Lent - festival (more broad)
  • Language is not neutral. Consider how terms change over time and based on who is speaking.
    • For example: Al-Andalus versus Moorish occupation of Spain
  • Look at the terms that different authors use to discover new keywords.

Boolean Operators and Other Search Tricks

  • AND, OR, and NOT help the search engine understand the relationship between your keywords.
  • The wildcard operator (*) lets you search for all words that have a particular root.
    • ex. Christian* shows results containing Christian, Christians, or Christianity.
  • Use quotation marks to keep multi-word concepts together.
    • ex. "early modern"

Research Guides

Managing Citations