Boolean Operators are just words! Using them with your search terms gives you the POWER to manipulate the number and type of results you get.

And will limit (or narrow or focus) your search if you are getting too many results and some of them seem too general.

For example, if you want information about athletes you could type athletes into the search box. That would give you a very long list of results. If you typed athletes and college, you would shorten the list because only items containing athletes and college would appear.

Near (a feature not all databases have) will further limit your search.

For example, the results of the search described above will not necessarily contain ONLY documents about college athletes. A document appearing on the list may simply be about athletes and vaguely mention college somewhere. Or perhaps the list would contain articles about college that simply mention athletes.

You can avoid "false hits" by using the word near instead of and, (if the databases uses this feature*).

Not will refine your results by eliminating "false hits" as well.

For example, when looking for information on drugs used in treating sports injuries, your results list might contain many articles about steroids. Using the search string sports injuries and drugs not steroids would eliminate those from the list.

Or will expand (or broaden) your search.

For example, if a search using the term athletics does not bring up the results expected, try following it with or and a synonym.
It is possible that the database uses sports instead of athletes, and putting or between them in a search guarantees that all relevant documents are retrieved.

*All search interfaces have their own set of search features - it is a good idea to read any Help or Instruction pages before trying your search!

Visit the Northwest Missouri State Library's web site for a great visual explanation of how Boolean operators work!