Archive:

1. Type in exactly what you are looking for. Search looks for an exact match of every word you enter into the search box.

2. If you type more than one word into the search box, search will return only articles that have ALL of those words. Search assumes an AND between search terms. It does not assume that the words should be near each other on the article page.

3. If you get too many results try putting phrases or names in quotation marks. George Bush returns any article that mentions any George AND any bush. "George Bush" returns only articles that mention George Bush (but not George W. Bush).

4. You can search by author if the byline appeared on the article page. To find all of the articles Hugh Sidey wrote about the Kennedys you would enter: kennedy "Hugh Sidey" To narrow those results to only those articles with Hugh Sidey as the byline, use the Refine by Author to the left of the search results.

5. Search is not case sensitive. You can enter your search term(s) using capital, lowercase, or mixed-case letters.

6. Spell the keywords as they would have been spelled during the years you are interested in. For example, during the 1920's and 1930's, "theater" was more commonly spelled "theatre" and "Iraq" was spelled "Irak."

7. If you want to do an "or" search (for example, find articles that have either Iraq OR Irak), you must do 2 separate searches. Iraq gives almost 8,000 results, Irak yields 79 results, but typing in both Iraq and Irak gives only one result.

8. If you limit your search by date keep in mind that date refers to the date of the issue that would be reporting on the event, not the date of the event.

9. If you are looking for an older article but are not sure of the date range, sort your search results by oldest first. Sorting by oldest first will also help you find TIME's first mention of your search term.

10. Initials should include the period if that is how they usually appear in print. USSR gets 15 results, U.S.S.R. gets 3129.

11. Skillful searching is a trial-and-error process. Sometimes the best way to tweak your search terms is by reading some of your first search results to get new ideas for other words or phrases that you could try in the search box.