Library Research Tips- Boolean Operators: Nesting, Truncation, Wildcards, & Quotation Marks

Nesting allows you to complete more complicated searches. Many databases and search engines will default to the operator AND first and will search for the terms connected with AND first. You can use parentheses (  ) to tell the database exactly how you want your search performed. Think of it like a math equation! Nesting lets you group together terms and dictate the order of your search. The terms within the parentheses will be searched first. 

Examples: 
(cats NOT tigers) AND art---this search will give us results of cats and art, and it'll exclude tigers 
Vietnam War AND (Colleges OR Universities OR Schools)---this search will give us results of the Vietnam War and colleges, universities, and/or schools
(Religion NOT Christianity) AND (Queer OR LGBT OR LGBTQIA OR Gay)---this search will give us results about queerness/LGBT/LGBTQIA/gayness in religion, but it will exclude the term Christianity 

Truncation allows you to search using part of a word. It's good for when you search a word that has variations. It helps you broaden your search. There are different ways you can do this.

Asterisk *: This is used to replace one or more letters in a word. You do this by putting an asterisk * at the end of the word you're searching. 

Examples:
Teen*---this will give you results for teen, as well as teenager, teens
Relig*---this will give you results for religion, religions, religious
Vege*---this will give you results for vegetable, vegetarian, vegetation

You want to be careful when you truncate that you don't cut your word down too short, because it can give you unrelated results. For example, if you want to search for politics and include terms like politician you might search poli*. This would give you politician, politics, political, but it'd also give you terms like police and polio. Or, if you want to search for women, woman, or womanly and you search wo*, you'll get woman, women, and womanly, but you might also get worm, wombat, worthy, and other unrelated terms. 

Question mark ?: This is used to replace a single letter in a word. It can be put either inside or at the end of a word. This is especially helpful for searching for terms that might be spelled differently. 

Examples:
Colo?r---this will give you results for color and colour 
Wom?n---this will give you results for woman, women, and womyn 
 

This allows you to indicate an exact phrase you want to search. You put quotation marks "   " around the term you want to search, and your results will produce that exact phrase somewhere in the search result. 

Examples:
"Banana bread"---if you were to search this term without the quotation marks, banana bread, your results will offer you the terms banana and bread but not necessarily the exact phrase of banana bread. Putting banana bread in quotes means your results will feature that exact term

"American Civil War"---if you were to search this term without the quotation marks, American Civil War, your results will offer you the terms American Civil War, but not necessarily the exact phrase of "American Civil War". This means you might get results on other country's civil wars, results on wars that are not civil wars, and results on the term American. Putting American Civil War in quotes means your results will feature that exact term