STOP WORDS AND BOOLEAN OPERATORS

and how they

affect searching

in WorkFlows

STOP WORDS

What are “Stop Words”?

Stop Words are words which do not contain

important significance to be used in search queries.

Stop Words are usually articles, prepositions, or conjunctions

such as:

as, at, be, but, by, do, for, if, in, it, of, on, to

BOOLEAN OPERATORS

Boolean operators are words such as and, not, and or.

What are Boolean Operators?

BOOLEAN OPERATOR - AND

AND retrieves records containing all of the specified terms and in one or more

MARC field

Example: Puppy AND Kitten

BOOLEAN OPERATOR - OR

OR retrieves records matching any or all of the specified terms.

Example:

Puppy OR Kitten

BOOLEAN OPERATOR - NOT

NOT retrieves records containing the first search term but not the second.

Example:

Puppy NOT Kitten

OPERATORS AS SEARCH TERMS

There can be problems with using an operator

as a search term instead of as an operator.

Example: “And West is West”

Example: “Hell or high water”

Example: “How not to die”

SINGLE QUOTATION MARKSWHEN SEARCHING

The use of single quotation marks at the beginning and end of your search, forces a search for those words together in a single field, but ignores the stop words (of and the).

Example:

General/Keyword

‘Heart of Texas’

DOUBLE QUOTATION MARKSWHEN SEARCHING

The use of double quotation marks forces a search for those words together, including the stop words in any single field, in any order.

Example:

General/Keyword

“Heart of Texas”

SUBSTITUTION (also known as WILDCARDS) and TRUNCATION symbols

Two such symbols are the question mark (?) and the dollar sign ($)

Example: wom?n Retrieves records containing either "woman" or "women."

Example: Anders?n Retrieves records containing either “Andersen” or “Anderson”

Example: Theat?? Retrieves records containing either “theater” or theatre”

Example: 3? Retrieves records containing anything between 30-39, 3a to 3z, etc.

Example: 197? Retrieves records containing 1970, 1971, 1972, etc.

The Question mark (?)is a substitution symbol

Example: jame$

Retrieves records containing "Jame", "James", "Jameson", "Jamerson"

Example: cook$

Retrieves records containing cook, cooks, cookbook, cooking, etc.

The Dollar sign ($)is a truncation symbol

PAM WILLSHEAD CATALOGER/ACQUISITIONS TRAINER

NORTH COUNTRY LIBRARY SYSTEM

pwills@ncls.org

315-755-0651