Boolean Operators

The boolean operators AND, OR, NOT are used when you want to define the relationships between your search keywords. The preferred format for entering the AND, OR, NOT operators is all capital letters.

In our earlier search with keywords Logistics Planning, Engineering Village assumed an AND operator, meaning that only search results that included both terms could be valid. To make it explicit that you are using the AND operator, you would enter the search string: Logistics AND Planning

The OR operator tells Engineering Village that you want to see results for either of your keywords. You will remember that you begin your search by brainstorming keywords and their synonyms. You might be searching for information on computation and you think that calculation is a valid synonym. Find results for both of these terms in one search by entering: Computation OR Calculation

If, however, you want to exclude results for the term Calculation, you would use the NOT operator: Computation NOT Calculation

Note about the NOT operator: Please be careful about unintended consequences, as the NOT operator might remove some relevant sources. One suggestion is to try your search both with and without the NOT operator.

Searching for Phrases

When your search keywords are in the form of a phrase ( "Logistics Planning" or "Traveling Salesman Problem" ), your search will return the best results if you tell Engineering Village to look for the phrase.

Phrase searching is done by putting phrases in quotation marks ( "" ). Going back to our Logistics Planning search, suppose you want to find only results where the exact phrase Logistics Planning appears. You would enter the phrase in quotation marks: "Logistics Planning"

Truncation

If you want to find any of several forms of a word ( Computation, Computations, Computative, Computational ), you can build this into your search by using a truncation mark.

Truncation of search terms in Engineering Village is indicated with the asterisk wildcard ( * ). In our example above where we search for Computation, when we want to see results for the terms Computation, Computations, Computative, and Computational, we can enter: Computat*

Ordering Your Search Terms

Finally, combine and order these concepts by using parentheses: ("logistics planning" OR scheduling) AND computat* NOT production

In this search, we are asking Engineering Village to return results that match on either the phrase Logistics Planning or the term Scheduling, that also include the term Computation, Computations, Computative, or Computational (or any other term that begins c-o-m-p-u-t-a-t), but do not include the word Production.