An update to the Bibliography of British and Irish History was published on 15 June. Over 5,000 new records have been added. Nearly 550 of these new records relate to Irish history, while 244 deal with the history of London.
Female munitions workers depicted in a First World War memorial window at Swaffham Prior, Cambs
To coincide with this year’s Anglo-American Conference of Historians (whose theme is The Great War at Home), we have put a link on the Bibliography search page to a list of relevant material. To generate this, we used the Subject Tree in order to establish what terms are used in the Bibliography’s vocabulary of indexing terms to describe the topics of interest, and therefore to get the best results. To use the Subject Tree, go to the Advanced Search page, and open the Subject Tree window by clicking on All Subjects (screenshot 1). You can then type, for example, “first world war” into the Search box to launch a search through the Bibliography’s subject terms. This will show that the term used in the Bibliography is “Wars, World War I” (this would also work if you searched for “Great War”, “1st world war”, “World War I” or “world war one”). (screenshot 2). Click the check box next to “Wars, World War I” to add it to your search terms. The Search box will clear so you can type in another term.
To limit the results to records concerned with the home front, type “home front” in the Search box which will show that the term used is “War, impact of”. Again click on the check box and “War, impact of” is added to the list of selected terms. To find records that are concerned with both the Great War and its impact, click the AND radio button (if you had left the OR button selected the search would return all records about the Great War alongside all records about the impact of all wars covered by the Bibliography) (screenshot 3). To insert the selected search terms in the search form click Insert/Close (at the top right of the window).
You are now returned to the Advanced Search page which shows the number of records found (screenshot 4). Click on Search to view the results. It would also be possible to limit the search by entering relevant dates in the Period covered boxes, for example 1914 – 1918 if the later consequences of and reactions to the war are not of interest. It is also possible to search on more specific themes connected with the war. For example you could search for women and the Great War by substituting “women” for “War, impact of” in the example above.
For more information using the Subject Tree see the online tutorial.
Screenshot 1
