Example: (England OR Britain) AND (Victorian OR industrial) AND women
This search will bring hits that contain all of the following criteria:
-
either England or Britain
-
either Victorian or industrial
-
women
Boolean is a set of commands that can be used in almost every search engine, database, or online catalogue. The most popular Boolean commands are AND, OR, and NOT. Other commands include parentheses, truncation, and phrases.
Narrow your search using AND
Using the Boolean command AND in your search tells the search engine to give you results that contain all of the words you have entered.
Example
media AND violence: only those results that contain both media and violence will appear in your search results list.
Expand your search using OR
Using Boolean command OR in your search tells the search engine to give you results that contain any of the words you have entered.
Example
teenagers OR adolescents: any results that contain either teenagers or adolescents will appear in your results list.
Narrow your results using NOT
Using Boolean command NOT in your search tells the search engine to give you results that contain the word(s) you entered except the word following NOT.
Example
Psychology NOT Developmental: any results that contain the word "psychology" will appear in your results list except those results that also contain the word "developmental".
How can I combine simple searches using Boolean?
By using parentheses, you can ask a search engine to perform several Boolean searches at the same time. It will first perform the search enclosed in parentheses before moving on to the other search terms. This is called nesting.
Example: (England OR Britain) AND (Victorian OR industrial) AND women
This search will bring hits that contain all of the following criteria:
either England or Britain
either Victorian or industrial
women
What is truncation? How can I use it to improve my searches?
Truncation is a wild card symbol--usually an asterisk*--that allows you to search for multiple endings of the same root word. Examples:
|
teen |
* |
|
Canad |
* |
|
teen |
s |
|
Canad |
a |
|
teen |
age |
|
Canad |
a's |
|
teen |
aged |
|
Canad |
ian |
|
teen |
ager |
|
Canad |
ians |
|
teen |
agers |
|
Canad |
arm |
Truncation broadens your search to get more results, but it can also bring back results that aren't necessarily related to your topic (ie. Canadarm for Canad*).
How can I search for a specific phrase?
Search for two or more words as a unit by putting them in quotation marks:
"body image"
"social media marketing"
This is also useful when searching for titles or phrases (such as lyrics):
"The Great Escape"
"I wanna hold em like they do in Texas please"
This can sometimes eliminate relevant results, especially if you aren't using the correct words or order of the words. For example, "Facebox flounder Marx Zuckerborg" will not get you results for "Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg."
Some indexes and databases will automatically treat as phrases any search terms that are not connected by AND or OR. For example, a search for women politics might only find records where the terms women and politics are right next to each other.
4 simple steps for effective database searching:
1. Start with a Basic Search
First formulate a research question: Does the death penalty serve as a deterrent to crime? Then think about the main ideas in your question and create a search statement using those ideas or concepts:
2. Expand Your Search Using OR
Use OR to include additional, related keywords:
3. Expand Your Search Using Truncation
Many databases allow you to use "*" (an asterisk) to truncate a term. Truncating allows you to search for all variations of a word using a single search. In this example, crim* will find crime, crimes, criminal, etc.:
4. Exclude Words With NOT
NOT lets you exclude words from your search to remove unhelpful articles from your results: