In a world where Google is super easy source of
retrieving information, using databases may seem intimidating. One of the most useful techniques is the use of
Boolean Operators. So what the heck is a Boolean
Operator? This sounds like a super scary term that you
probably don’t think is necessary, but knowing
how to use them is essential to effective research.
Really all these operators are, are the connecting
words “and, or, not”. When you are doing research and you have
multiple search terms you need to decide how to
combine them. Are you searching for similar, related terms? Or do you need all the information you’re
searching for to be included in your results? Is there information you do not want included in
the results? By asking yourself these simple questions you
can narrow your results to only the material that
will be the most useful to you, and basically saving yourself A LOT of time. Looking at the diagram here, we can see that
using the term AND we only get results that
include both search terms. In this case, apples AND oranges, where the
circles intersect. This eliminates any documents that only mention
one of the terms, and will give you fewer results. If we use OR we receive all of the documents
that contain either of those terms. This will mean
you will receive more results. Using NOT means that we receive information
only on term A but NOT term B. You can combine multiple terms (not just two) by
adding fields and combing them with AND, OR,
NOT. Now we will look at how to put these combining
words into action so that you can see how it all
works. Here we will use Academic Search Complete to
do a search on “cigarettes”. By simply searching for the term “cigarettes” we
get 34,216 results. But the real question is if we
got all the information we were seeking. Let’s say we want to cover our bases and search
for both “cigarettes” and “tobacco” but we don’t
care if both of those terms are included in an article. We just want to search for
them as related terms. So we will search this time for “cigarettes” OR
“tobacco”. This returns 89,791 results. We can see here
how many additional records we receive by
including the term “tobacco” to our search. Suppose we are researching cancer from
cigarettes and tobacco. This means we will do a search for “cigarettes”
OR “tobacco” AND “cancer”. This search returns 8,386 results; we’ve
eliminated a lot of unnecessary sources by
adding cancer to our search. Now let’s say we’re researching all cancers but
lung cancer. Our search is now for “cigarettes” OR “tobacco”
AND “cancer” NOT “lung”. This search returns 5,639 results. Clearly we
have eliminated quite a few results by removing
the word lung from our search criteria. By learning to search “smarter”, you are
eliminating time spent looking at sources that
become dead ends. Using databases will also help you to find
scholarly, authoritative sources that your
professors love and that will ultimately get you the grade you want! Good luck and happy searching!