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.
egypt and temples
medieval and catherdrals
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.
frescoes or murals
greek or hellenistic
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.
greece and (pottery or vases)
Phrase searching
When you type in a phrase, different things can happen.
In Truman’s Library Catalog if you enter:
Truncation searches for various forms of a word.
The truncation symbol varies in
each database.
In the Library catalog
byzanti* retrieves
byzantine,
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