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Boolean Searching


Boolean Searching
combines terms with AND OR NOT

  • involves combining search terms with concrete"operators" such as AND, OR NOT
  • selects documents, or other items in a database, in a concrete, absolute, mathematical (Boolean) manner
  • does not rank items or compare them to each other as to which is "better" but provides absolute results
  • follows the constructed search precisely
  • is precise, but not as flexible as relevancy searching

Boolean Examples

By combining terms with AND, you will retrieve items with BOTH terms:

Boolean AND

By combining terms with OR, you will retrieve items with EITHER term:

Boolean OR

By combining terms with NOT, you will retrieve items with ONE of the terms, but NOT the other.

Boolean NOT


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