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Advanced Searching
How to Search with Boolean AND / OR / NOT
A simple way to improve search results when looking for sources is by using AND / OR / NOT in your searches. This will make your search more efficient and the results more relevant.
AND
You can use the AND operator when you are looking to include more that one term in your results. For example, if you are looking for "diabetes" AND "medication adherence" you can link the two terms with the AND operator to ensure that all results must contain both terms. This will help to limit the number of results while also presenting you with the most relevant results.
OR
You can use the OR operator when there are two different terms that could be used to describe the same topic or related topics. For example, you could create the search "Esotericism" OR "Mysticism" and it would yeild results with either term. This way, the search is expanded and will provide more results.
NOT
You can use the NOT operator when you would like to exclude certain terms from your results. For example, if you wanted to find information about Materialism but you wanted to exclude Epicureanism from the results you would create the search "Materialism" NOT "Epicureanism". This will create results that are more relevant to the topic that you are investigating with fewer results. Be careful with NOT as it can exclude some results that are indeed relevant.