Boolean Logic - Connecting search terms with AND, OR & NOT

  • AND (i.e., lions AND tigers AND bears)

      Documents must have all three terms

  • OR (i.e., lions OR tigers OR bears)

      Docuemtns must have one or more of these terms

  • NOT (i.e., lions NOT football)

      Documents must have lions and must not have football

 

Expanders

Broaden your search by adding synonymous terms to the query or changing search term to a broader term.

 

Limiters

Narrow your search by adding additional concepts to the query connected with the Boolean operator AND.

In certain databases, you can limit your results by selecting:

        Full-text (only articles that are available in full text will be on result list)

        Scholarly (peer reviewed) Journals (only articles from scholarly journals will be on the result list)

        Date Range (set a date range so that all results are within a set publishing date range)

 

Phrase Searching

Use double quotation marks to search an exact phrase: "World Wide Web"

 

Proximity Searches

If two or more terms do not need to appear as a phrase but should occur within a few words of one another, use proximity search operators. Start with the letter N or W followed by a number that specifies how many words can go between the search terms. The proximity search operator goes between the two search terms.

  Examples:

  • media N5 violence will find results with the word media found within five words of the word      violence. The word order, however, is not important. So, media does not need to appear before violence.
  • media W3 violence will find results with the word media found within three words of the word violence. The word order, however, is importatant. So, media must appear before violence.

 

Wildcard & Truncation Symbols

  • Use the truncation symbol (*) when you want to search for all terms that have more than one ending. Keep in mind that the library catalog uses the truncation symbol (?).

      If you want to search for all words that start with teen, add the truncation symbol * to the ending.

     teen? will search for teen, teens, teenager, teenagers, etc.

  • Use the wildcard symbol (?) when you want to find variant words by replacing the letter in the wildcard slot.

      wom?n will search for woman & women