2. Boolean searching
• Work smarter...not harder!
• Boolean operators allow you to narrow your
search to specific information.
• This can be very helpful in avoiding information
overload.
3. What do Boolean searches include?
The THREE most common operators are
AND
OR
NOT
Now let’s look at how to use them, when
you search for information…
4. “AND” lets you search for items that include two or
more search terms or keywords. Both terms must
appear in the article in order for that article to
appear in your search results.
e.g. volcanoes AND causes
Searching just “volcanoes” will give
you the first circle.
Searching just “causes” would give
you the second circle.
Causes
But searching “volcanoes AND
causes” will give you results for the
overlapping portion. Volcanoes
Try an “AND” search for your topic..
5. “OR” lets you search two or more search terms at
once. Unlike “AND” searches, only one of the search
terms need to appear in an article in order for that
article to appear in your search returns.
e.g. hurricane OR cyclone
Searching using “OR” gives you
EVERY article that includes either
of the two search terms (or
keywords).
This sort of search is great if you’re
unsure of which keyword to use — cyclone
you can just try both at once!
hurricane
Try visualizing an “OR” search
for your topic…
6. “NOT” lets you exclude articles from your search results that you know won’t
be useful.
e.g. rock NOT geology
If I’m interested in rock music and I
search “rock,” I may get a lot of search
returns that relate to
geology, something totally unrelated to
rock music. But I can get rid of all
those useless geology search returns
by searching: rock NOT geology. This geology
means I have a lot fewer search rock
returns to weed through.
7. Quotation marks
Quotation marks are extremely useful. As we mentioned before, search
engines and databases may automatically put an “AND” in between each of
the words in your search string. So if you search…
King of the hill
…the database will actually search:
king AND of AND the AND hill
So how do we only search for articles that include the full phrase “King of the
hill”? We use quotation marks around the phrase:
“King of the hill”
8. Now let’s create a few search strings using Boolean
operators.
“I want to find information about cloning
E.g. humans.”
To find information on this topic, you could actually try
a couple of different search strings.
Here are two possibilities:
Cloning AND human
“human cloning”
9. Your project….
Each group member can take one of your research
questions and identify the key terms for a Boolean
search.
“Your research question.”
_____ AND _____
“ _________”
Once you have located a suitable article you can use the
‘reading for information’ template, to read for understanding
and apply your note taking skills.
