Help with Boolean

The most commonly used operators are AND and OR.

AND is used to narrow a search. For example, if I am researching the topic of the effect of
gloal warning on the polar ice caps, then I want articles that contain both of those terms. As a
result, my search would loo! li!e this" gloal warming AND ice caps.

If I searched gloal warming OR ice caps, then I would find articles that contained either one of
those terms # ut not necessarily oth. To explain further, the results might contain $ust the term
gloal warming or $ust the term ice caps %and thus not e what I&m loo!ing for, ecause I want
oth of the terms'. This is why AND narrows a search # I&m telling the dataase or search engine
that A(( of the terms must e present in the results.
OR is used to roaden a search. Typically, you want any terms lin!ed with OR to e li!e terms or
synonyms # for example, gloal warming OR climate change. OR then roadens the search y
pro)iding alternati)e, related terms to search. *hen you lin! terms with OR, put them in
parenthesis %gloal warming OR climate change' # this helps the dataase put the search in the
right order %without nesting, your results may not e what you expect, ecause the search engine
needs them to interpret your search. Nesting should not e used with single terms or phrases #
that&s where you can employ +uotation mar!s %explained a it later'.

NOT can also e effecti)e if you want to eliminate a certain term...ut it is not used as often as
AND , OR. One way that I use NOT is when I want literary criticism aout a oo! or author,
ut not a oo! re)iew of that author&s wor!. -o I might say .Nathaniel /awthorne. AND
.-carlet (etter. NOT .oo! re)iew. to weed out the oo! re)iews from my results.
-ome other techni+ues to use are +uotation mar!s # so, if I searched .gloal warming,. I&m
as!ing to find those two words right next to each other. If i search without the +uotation mar!s,
then the word gloal might appear in one paragraph, and the term warming in another. -o,
putting short, common phrases %.instant messaging,. .gloal warming.' in +uotation mar!s
simply increases your chances of retrie)ing highly rele)ant results.
Truncation can also e effecti)e, ut you ha)e to e careful that you&re not truncating so far ac!
that you end up retrie)ing many unrelated terms. 0ou also don&t need to use the truncation
symol %1' if you all you would retrie)e is the plural of the word # dataases will usually
automatically retrie)e the plural %for example, there&s no need to do this" daughter1 # the dataase
will retrie)e oth daughter and daughters without the symol'

-o, a more detailed search statement might loo! li!e this" %.gloal warming. OR .climate
change.' AND .ice caps.. *hat you want to a)oid is searching in long phrases, or using phrases
that contain words li!e of, from, etc. 0ou want to pic! out the !ey terms2concepts in your
research +uestion, and then lin! those terms with 3oolean operators.