• Make sure you have a topic. If you are allowed to select your own topic, choose a topic that is interesting to you.
• Go to our database. https://archives.library.illinois.edu/
• Click on "Search" 
  
• This will bring you to a page titled "Search Results"
• Look in the upper right-hand corner for a window that looks like the following "Search PDF lists" 
• If you click on the link "SEARCH PDF LISTS"  this will bring you to a DEEP SEARCH page where it will search EVERY PDF we have in the database (over 16,000 pages). A PDF search looks at all the folder titles in the boxes.

So, if you type in "Lorado Taft" it will bring up every PDF that mentions Lorado Taft in the University Archives.

In the search results, once you click on one of the PDF filename links, a PDF will open.

Once within the PDF. you can also do a (keyboard command) CTRL+F  to search for a specific key word.

On the PDF in the upper left hand corner is a record series number. If you wanted to look up the Lorado Taft Papers that would be record series number 26/20/16.

From looking at this PDF, you can gather a general idea which Record Series Number, Box Number, and Folder Title that is of interest to your topic.