LIS 4011 Information Access and Retrieval, Class 3

The Syntax of Searching

Boolean Logic, Boolean Operators

British-born mathematician George Boole (1815-1864)

AND: narrowing operator

OR: broadening operator

NOT: negating operator: USE WITH EXTREME CAUTION

Wikipedia on Boolean Logic

This is a most interesting entry. Read it!

Boolean logic, when applied to language, can seem strange at first.

Patron's request: I am looking for information about birds in Idaho and Montana.

If you started searching databases this way, you would not get desired results:

birds AND (idaho AND montana)

Even though the requested information was for information concerning Idaho AND Montana, to find the information you must search for Idaho OR Montana.

birds AND (idaho OR montana)

Database	Try these searches:
Peak (Classic)	cats cats and dogs cats or dogs cats and not dogs (information technology) or (computer science) java java and not coffee java and coffee
Academic Search Complete	[try same searches as above]

In-class Exercises:

1. Is the AND operator required for a keyword search in Peak?

2. a) Do a Prospector search for materials containing elephants, pigs, and giraffes. b) Do a search with pigs or horses. c)

Now add elephants and giraffes to the search.

3. Is the AND operator the default for keyword searching in Business Source Complete ? How can you prove this.

Proximity & Precedence Operators: for controlling proximity and order of words

WITH

NEAR

ADJ

WITHIN

NOT WITHIN

PRE/2 (ProQuest)

W/2 (ProQuest)

Database	Try these searches:
Peak	cats near dogs cats dogs dogs cats cats within 1 dogs dogs within 1 cats
Dissertations & Theses	dogs w/2 cats dogs pre/2 cats

 In-class Exercises:

4. Using Business Source Complete , find articles with Denver within 5 words of the phrase national parks. What can we learn about the way EbscoHost searches plurals from this search?

5. In LexisNexis Academic, find articles under "Major U.S. and World Publications" that contain renewable energy AND Egypt. Compare with renewable energy within the same paragraph as Egypt. Which search gives more results? Which search gives more relevant results?

Wildcards and Truncation

Wildcard: one character standing in place of any character

Truncation: one character truncating the search (anything to the right)

* most common truncation symbol

! used in LexisNexis

$ used in Dialog

Database	Try these searches:
Peak	wom?n educat?? agricultur* and (wales or welsh or engl*)

 In-class Exercises:

6. Come up with an example in Peak that demonstrates the differences between using single star tructation vs. double star truncation.

7. Using the word environment, show how truncation works in LexisNexis Congressional

Nesting (Parentheses): forces proper processing order

Nesting is essential when mixing the AND and OR operators.

Database	Try these searches:
Peak	environment and colorado or california environment and (colorado or california) (environment and colorado) or california

 In-class Exercises: 

8. Do a search for mountain lions or bears in colorado or new mexico in Peak, in LN Academic, and in Expanded Academic ASAP

Defaults

This is what happens when you do nothing. It is what happens when you enter a search without changing any of the settings.

Default search type [keyword, title, author, etc.]

Default operator [AND, OR, ADJ]

Default anchoring [left anchored, not anchored]

Field Searching

In each of the databases below, pay special attention to what fields are searchable.

Peak: DU's Library Catalog	http://catalog.du.edu/
ASC: EbscoHost Academic Search Complete	On Campus Off-Campus
Dissertations and Theses: Full Text	On Campus Off-Campus

Academic Search Complete, by default, searches "default fields". How can we determine what these fields are?

Search Strategies for Full Text Searching

Proximity operators much more important when doing full text searching than they are when searching surrogate records.

In-class Exercise: determine proximity syntax for LexisNexis Academic and Access World News.

In-class Exercise: Search the Denver Post via LexisNexis Academic for articles in 1995-96 about Denver International Airport and the baggage system. Do a similar search using Readex’s Access World News. How can searches be controlled by a) proximity operators and b) limiting the scope of the search (title, headline, etc.)?

In-class Exercise: Do the following searches in Academic Search Complete:

a) aquifers and Colorado (default keyword search)

b) aquifers (subject) and Colorado (geographic terms)

c) aquifers (subject) and Colorado (subject)

Explain the results of b) in relation to c).

d) aquifers (all text) and Colorado (all text)

e) aquifers w10 colorado (all text)

Explain the results of d) in relation to e).