Guides: MUMH 5440: Topics in the United States [African American Music]: Boolean Operators

AND, OR, NOT

Purpose: Use Boolean operators to search with strategy

Boolean operators, or connectors, are used to retrieve relevant results. The Boolean operators are the conjunctions AND, OR, NOT. Boolean logic derives from mathematician, George Boole.

Searching with AND connects words/phrases. The results must have both terms in the results.
Searching with OR will contain results with either search word/phrase indicated but not necessarily both terms on either side of OR.
Searching with NOT excludes a specific word/phrase. The results will contain the term appearing before the connector "NOT" but will exclude the term after the connector "NOT."

These concepts are represented with Venn diagrams in the tables below.

Boolean Operators Table

The table below is a summary of the AND, OR, NOT Boolean operators with Venn Diagrams as a visual representation included.
Boolean Operator	Results	Scope
AND	Using the Boolean connector AND, search results must contain the search words Beethoven AND quartets.	Narrow
OR	Using the Boolean connector OR, search results contain either Beethoven OR quartets in the results.	Broad
NOT	Using the connector NOT, search results exclude Beethoven from a search for quartets.	Exclusionary
Complex Searches with two operators	Building a search with multiple Boolean operators (AND, NOT), search results must contain information about Beethoven and quartets but no results about Schubert. Complex searches are an art!	Depends: Can be a combination of broad and narrow