Library Research

"Developing Your Research Strategy" created by Central Carolina Community College Library and modified by Randolph Community College Library is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) (opens in a new window).

All links on this page open in a new window.

Boolean Operators (also referred to as logical operators or connectors) are words used to connect your search terms. Use these search techniques to either narrow or expand your search in a database.

AND: The operator AND will retrieve search results that contain all of the search terms used.  Use AND to narrow your search by retrieving more specific results.

OR: The operator OR will retrieve search results that contain any of the search terms used. Use OR to expand your search by broadening the range of resources. OR is most useful when using synonyms as search terms.

NOT: The operator NOT will eliminate search results that contain a search term. Use NOT to narrow your results by excluding resources with a particular search term.