COMM 3070: Organizational Communication

Why combine keywords?

• AND, OR, and NOT (called Boolean operators) combine your keywords together to either narrow or broaden your set of results

Using AND

• narrows your results
• tells the database that ALL search terms must be present in the resulting records
• Be aware:   
  • In many databases, the AND is implied. For example, Google automatically puts an AND in between your search terms.
  • Though all your search terms are included in the results, they may not be connected together in the way you want.
    • For example, this search:  college students test anxiety  is translated to:  college AND students AND test AND anxiety. The words may appear individually throughout the resulting records.

Using phrase searching

• place quotation marks around two or more words that you want to search as a phrase, rather than separate words 
  • example: "college students" AND "test anxiety"

Using OR

• connects two or more similar concepts (synonyms)
• broadens your results, telling the database that ANY of your search terms can be present in the resulting records
  • example: cloning OR genetics OR reproduction

Using NOT

• excludes words from your search
• narrows your search, telling the database to ignore concepts that may be implied by your search terms
  • example:  cloning NOT sheep