Researching in iLink

Operators that Aid in Research when using iLink

We use Boolean Operators and Positional Operators to aid us in our research of resources when using our online catalogue, iLink. Each of these operators help us to focus our search by linking search terms. Understanding the relationship that exist between these terms and how they are used provides us with successful results.


Boolean Operators

Boolean operators aid us in locating records containing matching terms. Understanding how to use the following Boolean operators guides us in our research. The four terms are AND, NOT, OR, and XOR. We use “AND” and “OR” frequently at our campus.

AND

Using AND helps us to locate all records containing all the specified terms. For example, “apples AND oranges” locates all records that contain information on both apples and oranges and excludes any records that reference only apples or only oranges.

NOT

The term NOT will locate records that contain only the first search term but not the second search term. For example, if we search “apples NOT oranges”, we locate all records that contain information about apples and excludes any records that contain the term oranges.

OR

Using the term OR will locate any and all records that contain the specified terms. For example, our search on “apples OR oranges” will return records that contain information only about apples, records that contain information only about oranges, and records that contain both terms.

XOR

This term locates records that match any one of the specified terms but not all the specified terms. For example, our subject search on “apples XOR oranges” will display results only about apples and only about oranges. There won’t be any records that contain both terms.

Positional Operators

Positional operators are used to connect words or phrases within a single term search. We don't use these operators as much as the Boolean operators. The positional operators are SAME, WITH, NEAR, and ADJ.

SAME

Using this term locates all records in which a bibliographic record contains al the specified terms. SAME is the default positional operator. For example, Stephen SAME King displays all items by the author Stephen King, but not “Martin Luther King” by Stephen Jones”.

WITH

WITH is used in specific database searches such as title, subject, or author. It locates records which contain all specified terms. For example, Kathryn WITH Laura would display Kathryn and Laura went to St. John’s, but not Kathryn went to St. John’s. She met Laura there.

NEAR

This term locates all records where all search terms are adjacent to each other. The order does not have to match the order they were entered. For example, “rose NEAR red” would display something like “My Love is like a Red, Red Rose” and “Snow White and Rose Red”.

ADJ

ADJ locates records that are adjacent to each other taking into consideration the order they were entered and the number of words that space the searchable terms. For example, ADJ2 means that the terms will be within two searchable words to each other such as “From Here to Eternity” (“From” is two words from the word “Eternity”). It would be written as “from ADJ2 eternity”. Another example using ADJ3, “collected ADJ3 plays” would locate a record “Collected searchlights and other plays”.

In addition to Boolean and Proximity operators we use Relational Operators and Truncation to expand or narrow our research. More on these search aids is forthcoming.