When we try to locate information on a complex concept, we often need to first do searches on individual terms and then combine those searches to find articles on exactly the topic we want.  By combining searches using "and" or "or" we can do just that.

AND

For example, what if wanted to find material related to the personality characteristics of dancers.  We might begin by find material on personality characteristics in general--most likely by using the Thesaurus function or a Subject search. That would be our first search.  Then we would locate references to dancers (You may want to find out about "wild cards" to make sure that you search on dancer, dancers, etc.).

Select the Search History button and your screen might look like this:



Notice that each of your searches is listed at the bottom of the main screen and that each is numbered.  (The "?" is a wild card.)

We want to combine these two searches--that is, we want articles that deal with both dancers AND personality. To do this: 

  • check the searches that are to be combined (in our case #1 and #2)
  • click the Combine and search using and option
This will combine the two searches and produce a list of articles that contain both dancers AND personality.

The second way to combine a search is to type the search in the Search box like this:

We don't need to retype the words dancer or personality, just the search numbers.  Using Search will then get the results we want.

OR

If there are several terms that mean essentially the same thing, we might want to search for any one of several terms at the same time.  For example, there are a number of terms that might be substituted for "creativity." (You can find such lists of related terms in the Thesaurus.) Terms such "artistic ability," divergent thinking." and "gifted" might be used in articles about creativity.

So search of articles that include any one of these terms (or two or three), we use the "or" operator.

As with the "and" operator, there are two ways you might proceed.  The first would be to 

    • do each search individually
    • go to Search History
    • check the relevant searches
    • click Combine and search using or
The other way would be to combine all the searches into one in the search box like this

When you do such broad searches that include many terms, it is usually better to select the Subject option to limit the search to just those articles that feature the terms we want.
 

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