Advanced Keyword Searching

Instead of searching each of your Keywords one at a time you can use the following tools to do a more advanced keyword search.  

Boolean operators

• Boolean operators are used in keyword searches to link toogether two or more terms. The most commonly-used connectors are: AND, OR, and NOT.
• AND narrows a search; you get fewer records, because all concepts must be present in the records (shown in the diagram by the blue area). Use AND to combine different concepts in one search.

 

 

• OR broadens a search; you get more records because OR includes each of the concepts separately, as well as both concepts when found together. OR is often used to link together related concepts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• NOT narrows your search. It removes records that include that concept from your results.

 

Wildcard

• The question-mark symbol ? is frequently used to replace one character
• wom?n will return records on woman and women.

 

Truncation *

• Truncation is like a wildcard. When you add the truncation symbol to the stem of a search word, the database will find that stem plus anything that comes after it. The symbols used to truncate a word are used by many different databases and Web search engines today.
• educat* will return records on education, educate, educated, educator, educational.