Searching Strategies

From Keywords to Search Strings: Using Connectors

Search connectors (also called Boolean operators) will help us represent the relationships between our terms. The three connectors you need to know are AND, OR, and NOT. You may sometimes see these built into an advanced search screen, but you can always type them out yourself - just make sure they are in all caps so that the catalog or database knows you want to use them to connect terms.

Venn diagram of vegetarian and health with middle shaded in green to represent search connector AND

A search for vegetarian AND health (terms that represent separate concepts) would bring back results that include both terms. In the diagram, the green overlapping area shows you how using AND would narrow your results.

Venn diagram of vegetarian and plant-based where both circles are fully shaded in green to represent the search connector OR

A search for vegetarian OR plant-based would bring back any results that include either of those terms, which is useful because we could use them somewhat interchangeably. The whole diagram is green, indicating that using an OR between two terms increases our results because it brings back anything that refers to either of our keywords. 

Venn diagram of vegetarian and vegan where just vegetarian is shaded to represent the search connector NOT

The search connector NOT is used much less frequently than AND or OR, but can still be useful. For instance, if you are finding lots of sources that discuss veganism but you’re really only interested in vegetarianism, you could search vegetarian NOT vegan to get rid of any results that use the term vegan. As you can see in the diagram, that will get rid of some of your search results that include vegetarian alongside vegan, but it might be worth it to do that if you are getting too many results that aren’t quite what you want. 

For an interactive example, check out Rockwell Schrock’s Boolean Machine.

You can use multiple connectors in one search - for example, vegetarian AND health AND environment would bring back sources that mention all three of those concepts. Vegetarian AND (health OR nutrition OR weight) would bring back any sources that mention vegetarian and also any of the three concepts in parentheses.

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