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Humanities

General guide for Humanities; also includes resources for Asian Studies, American Studies, Creative Arts, European Studies, Jewish Studies, Liberal Studies, Middle East Studies, and Religious Studies.

Doing a basic search

You can use a basic search to find items by keyword, title, subject or author. The default option is to search by keyword. You can limit your search results to just San Jose State University Collections, or to California State University Collections or Articles+.

Search scopes

Basic search tips:

  • To search for an exact phrase put quotations marks around the phrase. For example: "cat psychology."  This will give you results that only include items with that exact phrase.
  • You can use these words to narrow or broaden your search: AND, OR, NOT (be sure to use ALL CAPS).
    • AND – retrieves results that have all the specified terms. So a search for unicorns AND rainbows will only retrieve results that contain both unicorns and rainbows. It is a useful way to narrow your search.
    • OR – retrieves results with at least one of the search terms. So a search for movie OR film will retrieve results that include either the terms movie or film or both. This is a useful way to broaden your search.
    • NOT – excludes any search results that include the specified term. It is most useful to use NOT when trying to eliminate irrelevant results or when a term has more than one meaning. So a search for hawkeye NOT marvel will give you results with the term hawkeye, but will not include results containing the word Marvel.