When searching in U.S. History in Context (Gale) or any database, you want to do two things:
Search terms are determined by your topic. Limits are determined by reading your assignment guidelines and/or asking your professor.
Since this is already a database that covers U.S. History, I did not need to add "United States" to my search term when searching on civil war.
Use the "Filter Your Results" to refine your search further. Here are a few of them, explained:
Subjects: Choosing a specific subject (e.g. slavery, soldiers, etc.)
Document type: Specifying document type (e.g. article, speech, etc.). This can be helpful if your search returns a lot of book reviews, like this one did.
Publication title: Show results only from specific journal(s)
Search Within: Use your own search terms to search within these results
Topic Finder: This is a visual way of narrowing down your search. Narrower search terms are shown in either a tile or wheel format (your choice). Clicking on a word gives you articles that relate to that word. If the topic finder is not relevant, try narrowing your search further on the results page and then select "Topic Finder" again.
After clicking on an article, there are a lot of options:
Tools: Allows you to cite the article (still need to check it for accuracy), download the article, print the article, and get the permalink to the article
The Journal: Allows you to go to the journal that published the article. In this example, the journal is The Journal of Civil War Era. This journal may have more articles that are useful.
Accessibility Features: Lets you translate the article, make the font larger or smaller, change the background color, font style, or spacing, and lets you listen to the article
The video below goes over a different Gale database: Academic OneFile. However, even though the content is different the features are the same.
The video mentions the "Subject Guide Search." You can get to the "Subject Guide Search" by clicking on "GALE ONEFILE" in the upper left of the Advanced Search
