Boolean operators help to narrow or broaden your search using your keywords. The most useful boolean operators to connect your searches are: AND, OR, and NOT.
AND finds records containing both terms. This narrows the search. For example:
OR finds records containing either one or both terms. This broadens the search and can also be used to account for various spellings. For example:
NOT finds records containing the first term but not the second term. This narrows the search. For example:
You can use more than one logic connector for the same search statement.
Use quotation marks when you want to search a specific phrase. This will make your search more direct, as the database or catalog will search for your keywords in a specified order. It is a great strategy when your keyword is made up of two or more words. Our example below is body image.
"body image" → body image
body image → body image, body, image, images of the body, body conscious, body appearance, etc.
This example shows that searching the keywords "body image" without the quotation marks, returns several resources with other words that may be unrelated to your search.
