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.
taxes and colonies
medieval and warfare
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.
britain or england
letters or
correspondence
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
vikings not football
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)
Adjacency
In some databases ADJACENCY is assumed when no operator is used. The words must be found together and in that order.
economic policy
retrieves only
economic policy
In other databases
adjacency is not assumed and when no operator is specified either AND or OR is
the default.
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.
Field searching
In the Library Catalog you can specify fields to search using
field abbreviations.
a: (author) t: (title) s: (subject)
a:Lincoln and s:correspondence
jir
