In the above example, (unicorn OR Pegasus) is a sub-query. When your search query includes multiple Boolean operators, parenthesis are important to help the search engine group them in a way that is relevant for your research. This set of results is smaller than the previous one, and no longer includes any content that includes the word, "tapestry." Using NOT in queries let the search engine know that we are not interested in the subsequent terms of the search. If you are seeing too many results that are not relevant to their research, finding a common pattern or theme in those results in which you might exclude a term, might be helpful.įor example, if you were only looking for scholarship on magical creatures that mentions unicorns or Pegasus, but do not want to see any results that include tapestries, the following query would work: Using the NOT Boolean operator will narrow your search results by telling the search engine to exclude results that have a particular search term present. The OR operator also works well if you want to include multiple synonyms in the same search. Using the OR Boolean operator will expand your search results by telling the search engine to return results that have EITHER/ANY of the search terms present.įor exampe, if you wanted to expand your results to include texts that mention unicorns and include results that mention Pegasus as well, the OR operator would expand that search:Īfter using the OR operator, you will return an expanded list of results to review. This will decrease the number of results to review and help you more easily find a relevant article.Īll 1,386 total results will include both the term “unicorn” and the term “maiden.” If, for example, you are interested in researching the claim that unicorns appear to maidens, you might refine this set of results further by adding the operator AND along with "maiden” to your "unicorn" search. Learn more about the AND, OR, and NOT operators, and how they work on JSTOR, below:ĪND is the default Boolean operator, and using it will narrow your search results by telling the search engine to return results that have BOTH/ALL search terms present.įor example, when you search JSTOR for scholarly content using only the search term "unicorn," the search yields a very large set of results. To use them, Boolean operators must be typed in all capital letters. How to use Boolean logic to narrow your searchīoolean operators help search engines use logic to limit, narrow, or broaden your search results in order to surface content that is most relevant to your search.By doing this, the result ‘black T-shirts and purple shoes for sale’ will not be returned. For example, use “black shoes” to get results where the words ‘black’ and ‘shoes’ appear together, eg ‘black shoes for sale’. Quotation marksĪlthough not strictly a Boolean operator, quotation marks can be used to get more accurate results. Some search engines use a minus sign in front of the word instead of NOT, eg -brown. The query ‘shoes NOT brown’ will return results that contain the word shoes but NOT the word brown. NOT tells a search engine what to ignore. Most search engines would interpret this as ‘black OR white AND shoes’. Use OR to request an alternative, for example ‘black OR white shoes’. This won’t guarantee that the words will appear next to each other, only that both words will be present in results, eg ‘black T-shirts and purple shoes for sale’. Sometimes you have to add AND to get results that contain both words. In general, search engines treat the query ‘black shoes’ as ‘black AND shoes’ - which means results must contain both words, eg ‘black shiny shoes for sale’. You may get results that contain only one of the two words, eg ‘purple shoes for sale’ or ‘black T-shirts for sale’. The words 'black' and 'shoes' will return results that contain the words 'black' and/or 'shoes'. They can be used to get more accurate search results. The most common Boolean operators are AND, OR and NOT (always in capitals).
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