Your searching activities in American Memory collections have introduced you to some of the joys and challenges of searching an online archive. Through your introduction to searching, you've been introduced to:

• American Memory has many aids to finding information; searching is only one of them.
• Search results differ with the finding aid used.

• The collections have unique characteristics.
• Collections contain surprises.
• Collections are not encyclopedic in scope.
• Searching a historical archive is not like searching Yahoo or a modern library catalog.

• Language changes over time; places change names. You need to put yourself in the time frame of the collection to think of good keywords to use in a search.
• History has labeled events and time frames, but people living through the time or event did not refer to their "present" by these labels. Searching by these labels will not be as productive.
• Subject terms and cataloging practices change over time as society changes and evolves.
• With people's names, putting the last name first usually pulls up things about the person. Subject terms follow this pattern. Putting the first name first usually pulls up references to the person or comments by the person.
• To select the best keywords for searching, research the subject, time, location for possibilities. For subject terms, scan the subject index with the collection.
• With phrases or multiple words, put the most important word first.

• Narrow the number of collections before beginning the search process.
• Search results may yield many hits, but the most relevant will be at the top of the hit list.
• Variants in word forms produce different results.
• Any search is limited to 5000 hits.
• A search does not include Special Presentations or other supporting information.
• A full-text search may use simple phrases to several sentences.
• Use a full-text search for concepts where several words are needed to describe a concept.
• Best Match and Find locate search words in the document text.
• Descriptive information, because it is on a limited amount of information, is faster than full-text searching. Use a search on Descriptive Information for known words, people, places, etc.
• Use Descriptive Information searching for works by someone. Use Full-text searching for works about someone.
• Subject terms in indexes and on item record pages are hot-linked to more of the same. Clicking the subject terms of an item will yield more items of similar content.