Doctor of Education (EdD) Program Guide

Boolean Operators

AND / OR / NOT

Boolean Operators are used when you have more than one search term that you want to link together as separate

• ideas,

• words or

• concepts.

Each term in a Boolean search is searched separately, and terms are linked together according the operator’s function, which is demonstrated in the following examples.

AND

Cat AND Dog finds all the items that have the terms Cat and Dog in them.

AND finds all the items with the terms CAT and DOG

OR

Cat OR Dog finds all the items that have the term Cat and all the items that have the term Dog.

OR finds all the items with the term CAT and all items with the term DOG

NOT

Cat NOT Dog finds all the items that have the term Cat, minus all the items that have the term Dog.

NOT finds all the items that have the term CAT but NOT the word DOG.