METCALFE LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF SARA

BIBLIOGRAPHIC INSTRUCTION

BOOLEAN SEARCHING

Tips on Performing Boolean Searches Boolean operators, are used to combine two or more search terms. The Boolean operators are AND, NOT and OR. sssss These words, placed in between search terms, change the way the search is conducted. AND The AND operator is used to tell the program to search for records which have BOTH terms located somewhere in the record. The resulting search set will be ONLY those records which have both terms. Example: television AND news The resulting search set is composed of records which have both of the terms "television" and "news" located in the MARC record. NOT The NOT operator is used to EXCLUDE records which have a certain term or phrase in them. This operator is especially useful when searching for records with a term which has several different meanings. Example: chocolate NOT cake For example, if you were searching the database for information on chocolate that is not cake. The resulting search set is composed of records which have the term "chocolate," but excluding those that have the term "cake." OR The OR operator is used to search for records which have EITHER OR BOTH search terms or phrases in them. This operator is often used with terms with similar meaning or usage. When doing complex searches involving the OR operator, it is the final operation performed in the search command. You can picture the OR operator as the center of the command, combining all results of the operations to the left of the OR with all results of the operations to the right of it. Example: dog OR labrador Order of Operation Boolean operators always perform in the following order, no matter how they appear in the search field: AND, NOT, and then OR.