NATR 2020: Natural Resources Field Methods: Searching HathiTrust

HathiTrust is a repository of out-of-copyright digitized books and other documents. This resource will be especially helpful for this assignment when searching for historical cultural information about your tree species and its distribution in European forests.

When you get to the search page, use the yellow box to log in to Auburn University as an institutional member (this is an extra login after you log in through AU Libraries' website). 

Try searching both the Catalog and Full-text. You will obtain very different results and both can be helpful!

• The Catalog search is more restrictive. It locates your keywords in the titles and assigned subjects of documents. This can be too limiting if your keywords or too narrow so try to think a bit more broadly about your subject. 
• Full-text searches find your keywords anywhere in the document. Although this may sound preferable, the number of results can quickly become overwhelming so it is important to choose your keywords wisely. 

Remember your operators and be sure to capitalize them!

• AND makes sure both terms are included in your search (reduces the number of search results)
• OR means that either term is acceptable for your search
• NOT is helpful if you are getting a lot of unrelated results

Use quotes if you want to search an "exact phrase"

Make use of the limiters on the left side of the screen - language, date, format, etc.

Once you find a document, you can search within the document for specific keywords to quickly determine if it suits your needs.