Skip to Main Content

ERA 5900 Introduction to Graduate Studies

Boolean Operators

Boolean Operators link concepts and are used to broaden or narrow your search. Briefly, here's how they work:

AND - finds results with your all search terms.  AND narrows your search.

OR - finds results with any of your search terms.  OR broadens your search.

NOT - finds results with only one of your search terms.  NOT narrows your search.

Wildcards and Truncation

Wildcards

Wildcards are used when you are unsure of a particular spelling or if there are alternate spellings of your search term. The most common wildcard symbol across databases is the "?". The wildcards work a little different within each database, but the common function looks something like this:

If you type: The database will return:
 col?r records containing color, colour, colonizer, and colorimeter 

 

Truncation

Similar to wildcards is the truncation function. Truncation is also used when you are unsure of a spelling or only know part of a search term. The common truncation symbol across the databases is the "*". What the * does is it begins searching for any words that begin with the letters you've typed, but may end in many different ways. It looks something like this:

If you type: The database will return:
educat* records containing educate, educates, education, educated, etc.
teach* records containing teach, teacher, teachers, teaches, teaching, teachability, etc.