Thank you. Very interesting and I can see how it could be a useful starting point - and I'm sure many of us will experiment further with Google's beta version search engine. Indeed this week's New Yorker has a fascinating article about the copyright/intellectual property issues inherent in Google's much larger digital library project that is well worth reading. But I digress. Traditional on-line library catalogues continue to have their merits, too, however - and resources for full-text searching such as JSTOR or Project Muse are well worth a trip to a major library. In this instance, for example, the Google beta version search engine turns up many titles that are not very useful for the initial query about Indian agents and that are of limited use even for the 1768 Fort Stanwix Conference. (This is not surprising: my research in JSTOR and other places suggests that sustained scholarship about the Fort Stanwiz conference is pretty limited, which may be why my short list had things published almost back to 1900.) In this regard, the Google search on "Fort Stanwix Conference 1768" for which Dr. McDonald provided the link resulted in 189 titles, most of which had perhaps ONE mention of the conference, and many of which are passing references...... Conveniently, of course, Google let's you look at each of these 189 pages - a great boon when away from a good library - at say a minute or two each, that's about 3 to 6 hours. Back when I was gathering information about the conference (among other things I needed to know exactly when it began and ended because Jefferson was accused of making advances toward Elizabeth Moore Walker while her husband was attending it) I found half a dozen useful things in the net in a regular Google search, but frankly it was traditional library on-line catalogues and JSTOR that got me most quickly to the really useful titles that I cited. (BTW I've already done what I needed on the Stanwix conference, I mentioned it just in recommending titles to someone else interested in Indian agents as an indication of the period - 1760s - for which these titles were most useful.) At some fundamental level all findings aids, printed or on-line, are a bit like indexes in one respect: a good index entry is based on informed judgment and will get you to the select information you're looking for. A less well edited index may provide dozens or scores of page numbers for every mention of some term or another (like a concordance), but those sought-after kernels of information are in effect buried in so much "chaff" that the result is very cumbersome.... Sometimes, even outside of modern architecture, less is more. Jon Kukla > I have found Google's beta version search engine for limited-view and > full-view books, with their on-line digitized data, to be helpful, > especially when a large library is not readily accessible. An example for > your topic: > http://books.google.com/books?q=Fort+Stanwix+conference+1768+&as%5fbrr=0 > > Go to the basic '.com' URL for general info. > > Hope this helps. > > Regards, > Neil McDonald > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Jon Kukla" <[log in to unmask]> > To: <[log in to unmask]> > Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 3:48 PM > Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] Virginia agents and the Indians > > >> In the context of writing about Thomas Jefferson and Elizabeth Moore >> Walker, I did some reading about the Fort Stanwix conference of 1768 >> that >> John Walker attended as secretary for the Virginia delegation headed by >> his father, Dr. Thomas Walker. >> Among the works I found helpful (some old some new and in no particular >> order) were: <snip> To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html