Environmental Engineering 30 (Sullivan): Search Strategies

A. Boolean Operators

OR is mORe (joins similar terms)  e.g. cognitive OR brain

AND is less (joins dissimilar terms) e.g. outsourcing AND Mattel

Sample Search Using both AND and OR

"eating habits" OR diet

AND

"college athletes"

B. Quotation Marks

Use quotation marks to search for a phrase

• "upper class"
• "marital status"
• "consumer debt"
• "income gain"
• "minimum wage"
• "living wage"

C. Truncation

Use a symbol, the asterisk * is the most common, to look for variant endings of a word

• financ* will search for finance, finances, financial, etc.

D. Combine search strategies

Combine search strategies for more efficient searching

• "social network*" will search social network, social networks, social networking etc

Does this search use Boolean correctly?

"cyber warfare" OR "cyber attacks"

AND

"online commerce"

Does this search use Boolean correctly?

outsourcing OR offshoring

AND

manufacturing