Search Tip of the Month (July 2009)

Boolean Operators

In searching, Boolean operators are used to combine two or more search terms in order to show their relationship to the database. Basically, there are three (03) Boolean operators and they are explained as follows:

• AND - combines search terms so that each search result contains all of the terms. For example, education and technology finds articles that contain both terms. The famous search engine Google supports this technique. Actually, in Google, there is no need to type AND, because it connects two terms with AND combination by default.
• OR - combines search terms so that each search result contains at least one of the terms. For example, education or technology finds results that contain either term. In Google, you have to type the OR operator between two search terms, with a space in both sides, as shown in the above example.
• NOT - excludes terms so that each search result does not contain any of the terms that follow it. For example, education not technology finds results that contain the term education but not the term technology. In Google, you can use this technique by typing "space & minus sign" before the term that you want to exclude. Example: education -technology

Try these searching techniques with Google and let me have your feedback.