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VTCC: Search Strategies

AND, OR, NOT - The Boolean Operators

AND, OR, and NOT
Now that you've come up with a list of keywords that might describe the information or ideas that you're hoping to find in the library databases, you need to think about how you will combine these terms in order for the databases to be able to understand what you want.  Databases use something called Boolean logic, which basically means that you need to use specific words to combine your keywords in order to get the best results.  AND, OR, and NOT are the words most commonly used to combine keywords--they are called Boolean operators.  Using Boolean operators can help you create a very efficient search.  

 

Boolean Chart