Orphan train topics will have less material available than Holocaust topics. There's enough to choose from and complete the assignment for any topic, but you will need to use broader searches and keep an open mind about what you're looking for.
In Summon, try using the search "orphan trains" with quotation marks. This searches for the exact phrase, so you don't get articles that mention orphans somewhere and trains somewhere else.
Consider filtering for these source types:
Note that some reference databases are not included in Summon, and must be searched separately. See the next section for suggested searches.
Reference databases contain articles from general and specialized reference works, like encyclopedias. They are usually intended for a reader who wants to get an overview or introduction to the topic.
As such, they may be a good choice for this assignment. Be aware that some articles may be too short, so be sure to check the length!
Use broad search terms when searching a reference database. Below are some suggested searches for each database.
For "orphans and orphanages" and "street children," some results will discuss the present day and/or countries other than the US. Skim for dates and place-names to find out if the article talks about the Orphan Train period.
Museum in Kansas devoted to the Orphan Train movement. This site is an especially good source for biographies of Orphan Train riders. Look under the "history" tab for these biographies and other informational articles.
EBSCO is one of our big periodical databases. It includes articles from newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals, covering almost any topic.
A search in Summon will include results from EBSCO, but searching directly in EBSCO lets you access advanced search features that give you more control over your results.
When searching EBSCO, put one concept in each search box. The following examples show some of the advanced search features. You can also click on any image to see the results of that search.
In this search, for articles about abandoned and homeless children in the 19th century, we use two search terms, each expressing one concept. Each term goes in a separate box of the advanced search, with "and" in the dropdown menu between them. This tells the database that we want results that have both terms, but they don't have to be right next to each other.
In this search, for articles about orphan train survivors, the boolean operator "OR" connects two synonyms in the same search box. This tells the database that we want results that have at least one of the terms, "survivors" or "riders," along with the term "orphan trains" from the other box.
In this search, for articles about orphanage life, the wildcard * tells the database that we will take articles that have the word "orphan" with any ending, like "orphans" or "orphanages." The word "children" in the second search box helps to focus the search: without it, a lot of results were coming up about orphan patents or orphan drugs. Finally, the term "nineteenth century" helps focus in on the time period we're interested in.
In this search, for articles about the Children's Aid Society, quotation marks are used to indicate that we want results with the exact phrase "Children's Aid Society."
