Answered By: Teaching, Learning, and Academic Support Library
Last Updated: May 15, 2019     Views: 5838

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

Read this library guide page on Boolean searches to learn more.

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