Answered By: Teaching, Learning, and Academic Support Library
Last Updated: May 15, 2019Views: 6075
To narrow or broaden search results, try using Boolean searches. Boolean searching is a method of using search tools called operators that modify search results using keywords to broaden and narrow search results.
The operators are:
AND, which combines words together to narrow a search
OR, which searches for one term or another to broaden a search
NOT, which excludes words from a search to narrow it
The modifiers are:
an asterisk *, which is placed at the end of a word stem and pulls results with the same stem and different endings to broaden a search
parenthesis (), which are used with OR statements to specify that the results should only mention one of the keywords
quotation marks " ", which will return the exact word or phrase searched with no variants