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Library Research Tips- Boolean Operators: Boolean Operator- OR

How to use OR in searching

  • OR broadens your result by providing more choices  
  • It tells the computer that your search can include the first or second (or more) search terms
  • OR is very helpful when researching topics that might have more than one term associated with them, terms that can be described in different ways, or terms that might be spelled differently 

    Examples:
    Cats OR Felines 
    Eggplant OR Aubergine 
    United States OR America 
    Indigenous OR Native American 
    Color OR Colour  

    A Venn Diagram can help us visualize this:

What this looks like when searching

If we were to search for Killer Whales in FoxHunt, we get 9,150 results containing the term Killer Whales. 


If we search for Orcas in FoxHunt, we get 17,534 results. 


If we search Killer Whales OR Orcas in FoxHunt, we get 24,287 results, which has greatly widened both of the above searches. OR helped us widen our search. 

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