Boolean operators are words that you can use in a search engine (like the library catalog, the databases in GALILEO, or even Google) to narrow or expand your search results. The most common boolean search operators are
AND
OR
NOT
To use these words, put them between two or more words or phrases from your search terms, and make sure they are capitalized as they are above.
To understand how Boolean operators affect your search results, see the box below.
For example, if I did a search for the word bank I would get all of the records or materials in the search engine related to the word "bank." This might include items that have to do with a financial bank or a river bank.
If I changed my search to bank AND savings, I would only get results that contain the word "bank" and also the word "savings." Most likely I would only get results that have to do with the financial bank, not the river bank. Using AND narrowed my search results.
If I searched again and this time used bank OR savings, I would now get all the results I got the first time about financial banks and river banks as well as results about savings. Now I have even more results than I had in my original search. Using OR broadens my search results.
I could do one more search, this time using NOT. When I search bank NOT savings, now I am narrowing out many of the results that have to do with thefinancial bank, so I will probably get more results about the river bank. Using NOT narrowed my search results again.
If you have questions about using boolean operators, don't hesitate to contact a librarian!
If you're having trouble getting results in the library catalog or the GALILEO databases, you might just be using the wrong vocabulary. The words associated with different records in the catalog and databases are assigned by librarians, and they might have chosen different words than you. For example, you might be searching for
Rock and roll
but the librarian might have assigned the subject heading
Popular music
to material that is about rock and roll. If you didn't know that, you might be missing out on important resources available to you. Those words and phrases assigned to records by librarians are called subject headings or subject terms.
So how do you find subject headings to use in your searching? There are several ways to find them.
1) Do some searching using your own terms, but when you find a resource that's just what you're looking for, examine the subject headings assigned to it. Would any of those be helpful to you? Clicking on the subject heading will give you a list of all the materials in that database that also have been assigned that subject heading.
2) If you are in an EBSCO database, on the top of the page you'll find a link for a Thesaurus (sometimes called Subject Terms).
Searching in the thesaurus will give you a list of subject headings assigned to materials in that database. If the word you searched has an alternate subject term, the thesaurus will give you a recommendation for what word or phrase to try instead.