ECS 300: Sample Book Search in the Library Catalogue

• The two main Boolean operators are AND and OR. They refine a search in a database, whether in the Library's catalogue, or one of the journal indexes like ERIC, or a Web search engine like Google or Ask

• AND narrows a search by adding a new concept e.g. homophobia AND high school. Each time you add another AND, you narrow your search further
• Google does an automatic AND: all the terms you type in have to be found
• OR broadens a search by adding synonyms within a concept e.g. homophobia OR heterosexism
  

• To combine terms with both OR and AND, you use nesting, or parentheses, to group the ORed terms -- the synonyms -- together in one set. E.g. (homophobia OR heterosexism) AND high school

• For further explanation and visuals of Boolean logic, click here

Keyword Boolean searching in Quick Find the Library Catalogue

• We’ll look for books and other materials on homophobia in high schools
• There are two concepts this search: homophobia and high schools
• Write down synonyms for each concept

• To join these two concepts, we need certain command terms called Boolean operators. See the box to the left of this one for an explanation

In Quick Find:

• Click Advanced Search
• First search line
• Leave it as "Any field"
• Leave the next box as "contains"
• Type in the search line: (homophob? or heterosex?)
• The question mark is the symbol for truncation. This means the computer will find anything that starts with the root “homophob.” It saves us from typing in a lot of variations joined by ORs
• Change resource type to Books
• Notice that the search lines are joined by the Boolean AND command
• Second search line
• Leave it as "Any field"
• Leave the next box as "contains"
• Type in the search line: ("high school?" or "secondary education")
• Click Search
• To see the full record for a title, including its subject headings, click the title
• Save the records of books that you think you might use by clicking on the envelope icon or the pin icon