Filters are your friend. If you know you're looking in 1850–1900, use the date filter.
After a preliminary query, the histograms on the bottom right show year and label (content type)
concentrations — zooming in on the dominant ranges sharpens results fast.
Smart defaults. By default we exclude shipping, weather reports, theater listings,
cost of goods, errata, and personal ads — they're rarely sought-after and can skew semantic searches
toward irrelevant content. Open the Labels filter above to add them back or refine further.
Got a complex question? Try
The Sleuth .
Ask it a few questions and it'll generate well-tuned queries that show up in your "Saved Searches"
sidebar to the left — click any to populate this search and refine further.
Drilling into a specific category? Switch to
Label-Specific
to dig into the taxonomy of a single label like "Domestic News" with sub-types and themes.
Save what you find. Head to
My Collections ,
create a collection, and set it as your "Active Collection". Every search result then shows a save icon.
Chat with a public collection. Switch to
Collections
search, find one that interests you, click in to view the stories, and use the conversation icon in
the top-right to chat with the entire collection.
State filter caveat. "State" refers to where the newspaper was published, not where
the event took place. A New York paper covering the Battle of Gettysburg has state="New York".