Search Technique (continued)
Boolean Operators
Now that you have a list of useful subjects, it's important that they be combined in a specific way. Using the e-mail and its impact on relationships example, you might have come up with the following list of subjects:
| Internet | Interpersonal relations |
| Interpersonal communication | |
| Social networks | |
| Social relations | |
| Marital relations |
Notice that the subjects have been grouped based on similarity. Subjects that are similar are ORed, and (groups of) subjects that are not similar are ANDed, as illustrated below. The next page provides a more complete explanation of Boolean operators, but you can see now how the example of a complex search at the beginning of this discussion was created.
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These pages were
written by Glenn Remelts.
and edited by Jeffrey L. Nyhoff and Nancy Zylstra
©2005 Calvin University (formerly Calvin College), All Rights Reserved
If you encounter technical errors, contact computing@calvin.edu.