Start with a keyword search. When starting your keywords search try to do a balance search—not too broad but not to narrow either. Something too broad will bring 10,000 hits, while something too narrow can bring 0 results. Start a search using the preferred term "African Americans" + your topic of choice. Use several synonymous that describe your topic to be sure that you find everything that you need.
Features of the Cornell Catalog:
Includes all of Cornell's subscribed e-books, journal titles, recent issues of print journals, and books on order or in the process of being added to the collection.
Better records for some law, music, rare book, and manuscript resources, as well as items in some large online historical collections.
Ability to browse by subject heading -- subheadings.
Ability to search by call number.
Search tips:
Search by title, journal title, author or begin with a relevance keyword search
Features of the Worldcat (First Search) Catalog:
Many resources from Cornell and from libraries beyond Cornell
Defaults to keyword search
Includes some articles from several OCLC databases (see the Finding Articles tab for more complete coverage)
Search tips:
To search for an exact title, or phrase, use quotation marks (e.g. "near east")
Use the Advanced Search to search by author, title, or subject and to limit by language, format, date or date range
To search for variations of a word, enter at least three letters of the terms followed by a question mark (?) or asterisk (*)
For example, politi? or politi* retrieves records that contain politics or political.
After viewing results, you may Refine Your Search to a specific format (e.g., journals, dvds,), year, language, etc.