World War 1914-1918 is the standard subject heading for World War I, and can be used to search most library catalogs and databases, as well as within the collections of national libraries and museums. It is still useful to search for variants, such as World War I, First World War, and Great War.
To find first person accounts in the library catalog, combine World War 1914-1918 with correspondence, diaries, or personal narratives, for example:
world war 1914 1918 diaries
When searching the full text of primary sources, you will not be able to search by any of the standard ways we now refer to the war because it wasn't called World War I until World War II happened. The war was frequently referred to as the Great War or the European War while it was happening.
Books published during World War I are out of copyright in the United States, so we've included Google Books, HathiTrust, and Internet Archive to find digital versions of published sources that are freely available.
