An ode to Boolean logic

Buenas dias, amigos! (In other words, I spent reading week in Costa Rica and I'm still in denial over this delightful -30* weather we've been having since I came back.)

I have a confession to make, relevant to the discussions we've had in lecture regarding research strategies. I love Boolean phrases. Love them. They are the single most useful strategy I've used in the last four years. Boolean logic is the key to narrowing down vast and vague fields of inquiry into pointed searches that yield the information I'm trying to find.

The basic idea behind Boolean logic is that, at its most basic, there are three "gates" through which information can be filtered: NOT, AND and OR. There are further combinations -- as many as seven gates -- that can be implemented, but for most research purposes, the basic three are usually sufficient. Boolean phrases allow you to sift through different facets of a field of inquiry, separating out combinations of search terms to be included, and those to be excluded. Boolean phrases can get quite complex, depending on how many search terms you include and in what combination, but once you get the hang of it, it's simple and extremely rewarding.

I've used it with great success -- in particular, I find "OR" useful. Some topics yield different results depending what variation of a particular keyword I use (e.g. creativity vs imagination vs daydreaming vs idea formation, and so on). Instead of having to perform multiple searches, one for each keyword, I can simply embed a phrase ("creativity OR imagination OR daydreaming OR "idea formation"). Likewise, using "NOT" helps cut out results that may not be relevant. My research topic is dealing with the connection between boredom and creativity, and the effects of mobile technology on this connection. However, simply searching for articles on boredom and creativity yields a lot of studies on workplace boredom -- which is not exactly what I'm interested in. I've therefore tended to use the phrase "NOT workplace" or some variation thereof, so that I don't have to sift through all those pesky irrelevant results.