Library searches have two main components: keywords and Boolean operators
Keywords are the terms you use to describe the main elements of your topic. Best practice: use as few words/short phrases as possible.
Boolean Operators are what you use to connect multiple keywords. There are three main Boolean Operators, and it is a best practice to use all capitals letters when typing them out:
- AND
- Used to indicate that you want results that contain both words/phrases
- E.g., the search Cats AND Dogs should only have results that talk about both cats and dogs, and not results that only have cats or results that only have dogs
- Pro Tip: use AND surrounded by keywords that represent different elements of your topic to receive fewer, but more topic-specific results
- E.g., Climate Policy AND Electric Vehicles
- OR
- Used to indicate that you want results that include at least one of the connected words/phrases
- E.g., Cats OR Dogs would have results that talk only talk about cats, results that only talk about dogs, and results that talk about both cats and dogs
- Pro Tip: OR is best used to combine synonyms or similar/related words/phrases to find more potential results (this is especially useful when you're not finding enough resources)
- E.g., safety net programs OR medicare OR medicaid
- NOT
- Used to indicate that you only want results that include the first word, and exclude the results after the operator
- E.g., Cats NOT Dogs would only show results with cats and would exclude any results that include dogs
- Most useful when you are using a word/phrase with multiple associations and you're wanting to weed those extraneous results from your search
- E.g., Climate Model NOT diorama [if your result list was including information about miniatures]
You can create more thorough searches by grouping together your related terms in parentheses. For example the search
(Medicare OR Medicaid) AND (impact on women)
should give you results about the impact of Medicare or Medicaid on women.