Montgomery College Libraries, Nursing Academic Tutorial

Boolean searching is used to search the online catalog using the keyword boolean search by using connectors to connect keywords. These connectors are AND, OR, and NOT.

Connector	Purpose	Example
And	Focus or narrow a search	ethics and cloning

This connector will find all documents that contain both the keywords in the example.

Connector	Purpose	Example
Or	Expand or broaden a search	ethics or cloning

This connector will find either keyword in any document. The record in the online catalog may contain one or both of the keywords.

Connector	Purpose	Example
Not	Exclude specific terms	ethics not cloning

This connector will find documents in the online catalog that contain only the keyword ethics but does not contain cloning.

As in keyword anywhere search you will also use " " marks for multi-word search terms and the truncation sign ? to retrieve multiple endings.