Getting StartedBoolean Operators: AND, OR, NOT
You can use as many or as few boolean operators you wish to create search strings. If you don't choose to put any boolean operators in your search, you're often searching by using the AND boolean operator.
AND
- Narrows your search.
- AND is the default for many searches (including Google searches).
Example topic: road rage
Example search:
rage AND traffic
What you'll get: resources that mention the words rage and traffic
OR
- Broadens your search.
- OR is very useful for searching synonyms or related words.
Example topic: road rage
Example search:
rage OR anger
What you'll get: resources that mention the words rage or anger
Notice that you're searching about rage or anger, but nothing about the road, driving, or traffic. You could make a more complex search string to include that other topic:
(rage OR anger) AND traffic
NOT
- Narrows your search.
- NOT excludes a word from the search.
- This can be tricky because you could accedentally exclude good resources. Use NOT with caution.
Thursday December 11, 2008Example topic: General Motors, but not about the Ford company.
Example search:
"general motors" NOT "ford motor company"
What you'll get: resources that mention the phrase "general motors", but any resource that mentions the phrase "ford motor company" will not be included in your search results.
Notice that we've used quotation marks around phrases.
