KEYWORD SEARCHING
PRINCIPLES
Operators
AND, OR, NOT combine terms using Boolean logic.
AND
Connects terms to retrieve every record in which all of the specified
words appear, regardless of their position in the records. AND is generally used
to combine unlike concepts.
human
rights and africa
nigeria
and women
OR
Connects terms to retrieve every record in which any one of the words or
both appear in the records regardless of their position in the records. OR is
usually used to combine like concepts, synonymous terms, or variant
spellings.
rites or rituals
journal or diaries
NOT
Excludes any words following NOT and retrieves records in which only the
first term appears. The NOT operator should be used with caution. To
find African, but not African-American:
african and not american
The
Library Catalog uses AND NOT, other databases mat only use NOT.
Nesting
enables you to make complex searches.
Use parentheses to indicate which terms should be searched together.
nigeria
and (rites or rituals)
africa and (textiles or fibers)
Phrase searching
When you type in a phrase, different things can happen.
In Truman’s Library Catalog if you enter:
economic policy the system will look for these words as a phrase in the title, and then AND the words economic and policy
To search only for a phrase, put it in quotes: “economic policy”
Truncation
searches for various forms of a word.
The
truncation symbol varies in each database.
In the Library
Catalog mission*
retrieves mission,
missions, missionary, missionaries.
jir
