Hi Madison,
I absolutely love questions like this and hope my answer is helpful. I worked in a research library for many, many years, so sometimes my approaches take lots of steps!
For these more specific subject inquiries, I always start with the LC Authorities (
authorities.loc.gov/
) on my journey to find books that match in the NLS Collection.
I chose Abraham Lincoln as my starting point, as I knew there would be many books about his life prior to his presidency in the LC Collection. I searched Subject Authority Headings with "Lincoln, Abraham" and got many, many results. I sifted through these and found several headings which could yield results like the patron wanted for Lincoln:
Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865--Birthplace
Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865--Career in law
Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865--Childhood and youth
Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865--Family
Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865--Homes and haunts
Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865--Political career before 1861
Doing a search in the LC Catalog (not NLS), I looked at several of the record and noticed that many of them included other subjects that started with:
Presidents--United States
I then went into the NLS Catalog and did an advanced search (
search.nlscatalog.loc.gov/advanced-search
):
Presidents--United States -- contains all -- Subject: all
AND childhood -- contains all -- Subject: all
The results gave me pre-presidential life stories (22 DBs, 9 cassettes, and 7 BRs). You could continue to do this with "Presidents--United States" and other subject heading words like "Family," "Birthplace," "Career," etc.
I copy and paste the results I want into the patron's request list in KLAS.
I would be really interested in how others might answer this question!
Traci
