Search Strategies (Coco Ang, W14)

Boolean logic is basically a strategy you can use to make your researching career a lot easier! More specifically, it is when you use the terms, AND, NOT and OR to help narrow down or broaden up your search.

AND is used to narrow down your search by only looking for sources that contain the terms that you have linked with AND.

NOT is also used to narrow down your search. It does so by looking for sources that do not contain the specified term(s).

OR is used to broaden up your search by looking for sources that contain the terms you have linked with OR.

For example, take a look at the following search phrase:

“chocolate” AND “milk OR dark” NOT “white”

This search would give us sources that contain the terms, “milk” or “dark”, as well as sources with, “chocolate.” However, this search would not show any sources that contain the term “white.”

For more information, you can visit this website which further explains the use of these terms!

This search strategy has helped me find great sources for my podcast! For example, initially I had intended on using the National Institutes of Health database to look for my sources because I thought that using this database would help me narrow down my search. However, after using the Boolean search terms, I found great sources that were directly related to my topic from a search on Google! Even though Google has a huge reach, I was able to focus my search with these 3 little terms.

Since I have had such a successful experience with Boolean logic, I will definitely be using it again! I also recommend that everyone should try using it as well!