Conjunction Junction: Simple Boolean Searching

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Conjunction Junction Simple Boolean Searching

• How AND, NOT, and OR can get you pretty far

Amanda Sprochi 18 May 2005 Plattsburgh State
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Boolean what?

• Boolean Operators named after George Boole, who
  invented them as a part of a system of logic in
  the mid-1800s. It comes from algebra (but its
  still useful! Really!)

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Boolean Operators

• Three major terms used in online searching
• AND
• OR
• NOT

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What do Boolean operators do?

• They focus your search to relevant terms and
  concepts
• They can broaden or narrow a search as needed to
  find more or fewer sources
• They are useful for searches with more than one
  major concept

Attention Deficit Disorder
college students
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How it works

• AND retrieves everything that has BOTH concepts

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• OR retrieves everything that has EITHER concept

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• NOT retrieves everything that has one concept
  but NOT the other

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Picking your terms!

• Brainstorm keywords for the topic you are looking
  for
• Attention Deficit Disorder
• ADD
• College students
• University students

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Tip Start with your library!

• Library catalogs and databases are already
  pre-selected as good sources by librarians
• Web information should be used with caution
• If any piece of information or source you get
  seems weird or greatly differs from the rest of
  your sources, you probably dont want to use it

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Nesting terms using parentheses

• Use parentheses like in algebra to tell the
  search engine what to search together and what to
  search separately
• (x y) z
• (attention deficit disorder OR add) and college
  students

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Another trick truncation

• Truncation is using a character at the end of a
  word (usually a ? or a ) to represent an unknown
  number of letters
• Helps find related terms, like plurals
• Example
• work finds work, working, worker, works,
  workings, workers

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The tradeoff

• Broadening (OR) More hits less accuracy
• Narrowing (AND or NOT)
• Less hits more targeted search, fewer choices

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Some things to remember

• Different search engines have different search
  rules, so check out the help or tips pagesthey
  will tell you want kinds of searching they
  support
• Remember that databases and catalogs provided
  through the library are generally more reliable
  for information than the web
• The web can be a great resource, but stay
  skeptical--double check anything you use from the
  web with another source, particularly if you are
  not sure how reliable it is
• If it sounds wacky or wrong, it probably isdont
  use it!

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So lets recap--

• Boolean operates help limit search results
• AND narrows search by requiring that all search
  terms be in the document or record
• OR broadens search by finding all documents or
  records with either one term or the other
• NOT excludes records from search results that
  have a certain term

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Additional help

• Information from this session is available on my
  webpage, www.kent.edu/asprochi Click on Boolean
  searching
• For comparisons of search engines, try Search
  Engine Showdown at http//www.searchengineshowdown
  .com/features/
• If you ever have additional questions, feel free
  to email me at asprochi_at_lms.kent.edu Ill be
  happy to answer any questions you have.

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Good Searching!