Refining searches w88 casino games using Boolean operators

Contributor: Tony DeFilippo

When searching online databases, w88 casino games often get too many or too few results. Identifying keywords or phrases and then connecting them using Boolean operators (AND, OR, and NOT), along with the other tools in this guide, can help w88 casino games narrow, expand, and/or refine your searches to find relevant, useful sources.

AND

Using AND allows you to narrow down a w88 casino games. If you are writing about the ethical concerns of cloning humans, but you only w88 casino games “cloning,” you will probably get a lot of irrelevant results. If you w88 casino games “cloning AND ethics AND humans,” however, you will only get results that include all three w88 casino games terms.

OR

Using OR can help expand your w88 casino games. OR tells the database to give you results that include any of your w88 casino games terms, together or by themselves. If you w88 casino games “cloning OR genetics OR reproduction,” you will get results that only mention genetics, reproduction, or w88 casino games as well as sources that include some combination of these terms.

NOT

Using NOT is another way to narrow a w88 casino games because it allows you to exclude some results. If you are writing about the science of cloning, but too many of your results are about ethics, searching “cloning NOT ethics” will remove those results from your w88 casino games.

Quotation marks

Putting your w88 casino games terms in quotes ensures adjacent words are searched as a phrase and not as individual words. Searching “successful cloning experiment” without quotes will return results where the database found those individual words anywhere in the source.

Using quotes will make your w88 casino games more exact. It will only return results with the complete phrase. Be careful when putting single words in quotes; for example, If I put the word “ethics” in quotes, I will get results for that word but a word like “bioethics” would be excluded.

Parentheses

When using AND, OR, and NOT, parentheses organize your terms and clarify to the database what goes together. Most databases will prioritize the AND connection, which can cause issues. If you w88 casino games “cloning AND ethics OR law” you will get results for “cloning AND ethics” or “law.” However, if you w88 casino games “cloning AND (ethics OR law)” you will get results about cloning ethics or cloning laws.

Truncation

One more helpful tool is using truncation symbols. If I w88 casino games “cloning” AND (ethics OR law)” I will get results with the specific words w88 casino games, ethics, and law, but I won’t get w88 casino games that include words like clone, clones, or ethical.

Adding a truncation symbol to words will alleviate this problem. (Most databases use * as their truncation symbol but not all. Look in the databases help section to find their specific guidelines.) By using “ethic*&w88 casino games; instead of “ethics,&w88 casino games; my results will include any word that starts with “ethic.&w88 casino games; Notice I had to tweak the way I’m including “cloning&w88 casino games; when I use truncation because too many words start with the letters “clon.&w88 casino games;

Online databases are powerful resources, and it requires a skilled researcher to navigate them efficiently. Finding what w88 casino games’re looking for will often require testing different combinations of the tools in this guide as well as the built in functions in different databases.

References

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Database w88 casino games tips: Boolean operators. Retrieved from https://libguides.mit.edu/c.php?g=175963&p=1158594