Search techniques: Understanding AND, OR, & NOT
Updated 2022
This video is taken from QUT Library's 'Study Smart: information research and literacy skills' tutorial. Module 2.2.2 Use search techniques http://studysmart.library.qut.edu.au/...
This video is licensed by QUT Library under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike International 4.0 License (CC-BY-NC-SA)
Transcript:
Once you've come up with a list of keywords for your search concepts, you'll need to put them together in a way that your search engine will understand.
There are three connecting words that search engines recognise when combining words: AND, OR and NOT
These connecting words are known as search operators, Boolean operators, or just Boolean.
Using the operator NOT often cuts out good results, so we suggest you just use AND and OR to start with.
When building a search, put AND between two words, or between two groups of words, when you want your results to contain BOTH of those concepts.
In this example, we are asking the search engine to give us every article from this list, that has both the words LIBRARY and MACHINE LEARNING
Only the articles that have both parts of the search, library AND machine learning, will appear in our results. So we get these five articles with this search.
Next, put OR between your words when you want either one of them to appear in your result, but it doesn't matter which one
In this example, it doesn't matter if the source uses the word university, or the word college, since they usually mean the same thing.
So in our results here, some use the word university, some use college, and some might use both. So long as one of the search terms appears in the source, it will show up in our results.
One way to think about using search operators, is that you should put AND in between your concepts, and OR between your synonyms.
Drawing a diagram like this…
…or a table like this, can help you keep track of your keywords, and which operator to use.
When you go to enter your search, look out for the 'Advanced search' option.
In this template you can type your search operators in... or use the drop-down menus.
If you used a diagram or table to plan your search, it's easy to divide up your concepts into separate lines, and keep track of where your ORs and ANDs go.
Try using search operators in your searches, and if you need help contact the QUT Library.
Updated January 2022