Searching 102

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Searching 102
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George Boole, 1815-1865

• British mathematician largely credited with
  inventing modern algebra.

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Boolean Logic

• Creating a SET that fills certain criteria.
• Choices of Operators AND, OR, NOT.

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AND

• Both words MUST be present to be valid for the
  set.
• Any order, any distance apart will do.

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Venn Diagram

• John Venn
• 1834-1923

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OR

• Either word will do.
• Useful for
• Synonyms
• Plurals
• Other forms of a word (adjectives, adverbs,
  tenses)

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NOT

• Word must NEVER appear in the record.
• CAUTION! Think before you use this!!!

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Parentheses

• Normal order of operation
• NOTs
• ANDs
• ORs
• Parentheses forces that part of the operation to
  be done first
• Parentheses keep various parts of your search
  statement together so they can be handled
  properly.

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Example

• My family wants a new pet. Will it be a Bunny?

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• Will it be a Rabbit?

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• Will it be a Hare?

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Search Strategy

• bunn? OR rabbit? OR hare OR hares

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TOO MANY RESULTS! Most are not relevant

• Im looking for a pet, so Ill add that to my
  search strategy

• Pet or pets

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New Strategy

• (bunn? OR rabbit? OR hare OR hares)
• AND
• (pet OR pets OR companion animal?)

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Still some weird stuff in my results!

• Dont want to see laboratory animals.
• Dont want to know about hunting.

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New Search Strategy

• ((bunn? OR rabbit? OR hare OR hares) AND (pet OR
  pets? OR companion animal?)) NOT (laborator? OR
  hunt?)

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Stop Words

• Articles
• A, An, The
• Prepositions
• Of, In, By, For, From, To .

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Next Step Fields

• Library catalog and other databases put certain
  information in Fields.
• Author
• Title
• Date
• Subject Headings
• You can use the fields to tighten up your search.

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(Time to go to the Librarys Website)