Key terms
The terms we may use today very modern terms and are also Western terms. Other cultures and periods in history may have used different terms, which will be indicated in each era tab.
That being said, these are some terms that may be helpful:
Note: the terms butch and femme refer to a specific subculture but still may be useful when searching as some historians may apply them to long past people(s). Some of these are very modern terms, but again historians may use them when talking about people of the past so they can be useful.
Phrase Searching
You will notice above that terms that use more than one word are in quotations. This because search engines and databases will search for each word separately no matter where they appear in the results. If you want to search as a complete phrase you will need to put it in quotations.
Ex: "butch lesbians"
Proximity Searching
Proximity searching is when you search for two terms that within a certain proximity of each other. You can do this by putting the term NEAR, or in some cases NEXT, in between your keywords. You can also specify within how many words you would like them to be by adding a forward slash and then a number. In some search tools, you will not even need the word NEAR and can just put the slash and the number.
Ex: sapphic NEAR/5 women
Truncation
Truncation is when you add an asterisk to the end of your keyword to catch any variations of that term. You can put the asterisk at the beginning of a term or at the end to catch both prefixes and suffixes.
Ex: fem*
This will capture any variation of fem such as fem, femme, or female.
Boolean Operators
Boolean operators can be used to enter multiple key terms to either broaden or narrow your search results.
Search expanders:
Search limiters:
Google is the most widely used search engine but you have to be very intentional with your searches. They do have an advanced search feature under tools that allows different search bars for the boolean operators, but you can always use the operators directly in the search box. It also allows you to filter for region, where your terms appear, specific file types, and more. Under tools the verbatim option is going to be very helpful. The verbatim option conducts your search with just your terms and not ones that Google thinks may be related. You can also do a custom date range under tools. Limiters are going to be extremely beneficial when using Google because it can give you millions or even billions of search results.
Google Scholar can be a really useful tool because it casts a really wide net. This also means that the sheer amount of results you get can be overwhelming. Again, limiters and advanced search will be important here. Since Google Scholar searches academic works, you may want to use more formal language for your key terms such as lesbian or homosexual women. There will be plenty of articles that may not access to and if that is the case you can always try to get them using inter library loan.