Boolean
Operator
AND
Boolean
operators allow users to join two or more search terms, thereby
producing a more precise search which results in a better set
of resullts. When you join two or more terms with
AND, you are saying
that every document you retrieve must contain all of your search
terms. The boolean AND allows
you to make your search more specific.
The
following search is limited to a specific aspect of Roosevelt's
career.
Franklin
Delano Roosevelt AND Civilian Conservation Corps
Colleges AND rankings
In
some search engines, such as Google, and
is the default, so there is no need to insert it between search
terms.
Boolean
or
When you insert
OR
(in capital letters) between search terms, you ask that either
or both terms appear in the documents you retrieve.
This strategy
can be used to broaden a search by including variant spellings
for a search term or alternate ways of saying the same thing.
Including
variant spellings of a word
marijuana OR marihuana
Including alternate ways of saying the same
thing.
GOP OR Republican Party
slavery OR bondage
Keep
concepts that are alike together and separate from the rest of
your search string by enclosing them in parentheses.
This is called nesting. Some, but not all, search engines
support nesting. See below for examples.
(slavery OR bondage) AND Underground Railroad
(AIDS OR Auto Immune Deficiency Syndrome) AND treatment
(Nafta OR North Atlantic Treaty Organization) AND (Mexico OR Canada)
Note:
Boolean Operators should be capitalized
Boolean
NOT/Truncation
. Phrase
Searching/Capitalizatization . Field
Searching . Domain Restriction
. Advanced Searching . Refining
a Search . Boolean
AND and OR
