Advanced Searching Techniques

by Rowena Namoca, Nancy Willis, and Craig Cunningham

  Final Activity
  Conducting your search Glossary
  Search Tools Home

 

ADVANCED SEARCHING TECHNIQUES

If your search requires more than one word, your search could benefit from advanced search techniques. Advanced searching techniques involve the use of keyword search operators. The following are the most commonly used operators:

1. Boolean

Uses AND, OR, and NOT to connect words and phrases in the query.

  • By using AND, you want both terms to be present somewhere withing the document. For example, truth AND justice.
  • By using OR, you want one of the terms that you enter to be present in the document. For example, college OR university.
  • By using NOT, you want to exclude a particular term from the document. For example, bulimia NOT anorexia.

2. Plus/Minus

By using the plus (+) and minus (-) symbols, you are forcing the inclusion and exclusion of a particular word in a search statement. (Using + is like a Boolean "and"; using - is like a Boolean "not".)

  • Use (+) before a term if you want the search results to only contain that term.
  • Use (-) before a term if you want the search results to not contain that term.
  • Note: Do not leave a space between the operator and the term that follows:
  • For example: +bulimia -anorexia

3. Phrases

By using quotation marks (" ") within your query, you are requesting for documents containing the exact phrase within the quotation marks.

For example: "literature circles"

4. Stemming or Truncation

By using this method, you are requesting your search tool to use the stem or the main part of a word to search for variations of the word. An asterisk (*) symbol next to your query indicates a wild card.

For example: sing* (This type of query would result to hits containing sings, singer, singing or singalong.)

5. Case Sensitive

  • Use lower case for query terms except for proper names
  • Treat adjacent capitalized words as a single proper name such as Abraham Lincoln.
  • Separate proper names from each other with a comma.
  • For example: Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson

 

Try this Advanced Searching Techniques Activity to see the difference in simple keywords and boolean operators.

Other types of Search Tools:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

 
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