1. Super Secret Searching Tips
1.Boolean
AND, OR, NOT. More on these in a
minute.
2.Phrase searches 3. Capital letters
Put quotation marks around something and don’t matter
search it as a phrase! like…. “Gun control”
4. Use the built in
Ever try to search for song lyrics on google?
This trick helps!
filters!
5. The * Trick more on this in a minute too.

2. Boolean
These are logic terms, named
after a mathematician, that also
help us search!
AND
AND limits your search, since results
must have ALL your search terms.
OR
OR expands your search, since
results can include ANY of your
search terms.
NOT
NOT limits your search by
eliminating all results containing
certain words.

3. • AND will LIMIT your search
• If you search Cats AND Dogs, the results will include
only items that contain both of those words.
• A Venn diagram (remember those?) can help you
visualize. Check out pg 88 of the book!
• This is probably the one you will use the most. Why?

4. Boolean -- OR
• OR will EXPAND your search
• If you search Cats OR Dogs, the results will
include items that contain either of those
words.

5. Boolean -- NOT
• NOT is kind of a weird one.
• It limits, but not the same way, or the same
amount that AND will.
• If you search Cats NOT Dogs, it will find
everything about Cats, but remove from your
results any item that mentioned dogs.

6. Boolean -- Databases
• These terms are built into the
databases, which makes them very easy to
use!

7. The * trick
• The * trick can save you lots of time.
• I’m always telling you about KeyWords right?
And how if you’re searching “Bullying” you
also need to search “Bullies” and “Bully”?
• Well, the * trick allows you to search all of
those terms at once!

8. The * trick
• Searching Bull* will bring up all those words.
• Searching child* will bring up what?
• What about Facebook*
• The downside of this trick, is that sometimes, you
will get words you didn’t mean to! Like searching
Bull* will also bring up “bulls”.

9. Power searching
• Gale and Ebsco are two big companies that
own most of our databases.
• Both of them provide you with an option to
search multiple databases at the same time.
• This EXPANDS your search from a teacup sized
search to a small bucket. (But that’s still
smaller than the ocean that is Google!).