Searching Made Easy

            Hello Amanda here with this week’s blog post. We’ve talked about a lot of different research strategies and today I’ll talk about Boolean Logic. Boolean Logic is a way of searching for specific articles or such by using key words in different contexts. It’s supposed to help narrow down and specify your searches. Using the word ‘and’ between two words will give you articles that have both those words in the article. Using the word ‘or’ between words in your search will give articles that have either of those words. And using the word ‘not’ between your keywords will give you articles with one word but will not contain the other. This is a good way of filtering out any articles that may have the keyword you’re looking for but in a different context. I have used a Boolean Search both successfully and unsuccessfully depending on what it is I am searching for. If I`m searching for something specific and with odd or typically unused words I tend to get the results I need. But if I’m looking for something more common, I will still get unrelated articles no matter how many times I filter words out using ‘not.’ I usually use Boolean searches, and will likely keep using them since I understand how they work. Well that’s all for this week’s blog post. Actually had a longer one this time. I will be back next week!