Creating Search Strings -  Let's put it all together now!

Believe it or not, you already know what a search string is. Beginning with Boolean, all the way through to Phrase searching, you have been working with search strings without even knowing it.

 

What is a search string?

A search string is two or more keywords connected by Boolean operators.  Some examples:

UAE AND environment music NOT rap AND Gulf violence AND children AND television

These are fairly straightforward search strings, containing only Boolean operators and keywords.  We have also seen more complex ones, like:

(UAE OR Gulf) AND (environment OR pollution) health AND (food OR nutrition) AND society

Notice that these search strings use not only the Boolean operators, but also parentheses (brackets).  When the need arises, you can also add truncation and phrase searching:

(UAE OR "United Arab Emirates" OR Gulf ) AND child* AND (educat* OR "learning styles")

Now that's a pretty complex search string!

 

Let's look at how to put together search strings by yourself....