EMGT 850 EVRN 721 - Environmental Issues, Regulation, and Policy: Finding Articles

Boolean Operators

Boolean operators allow you create searches that combine keywords and search terms for more relevant search results. 

• AND - narrows the search by searching for both terms 
  • Ex. life cycle assessment AND tomato, returns results that contain life cycle assessment and tomato 
• OR - broadens the search by searching for either terms
  • ​Ex. life cycle assessment OR tomato, returns results that contain either the life cycle assessment or tomato
• NOT - narrows the search by excluding a term 
  • ​Ex. life cycle assessment NOT tomato, returns results that contain life cycle assessment, but not  tomato

Searching Tips

Here are some general searching tips

• Use quotation marks "" to search a phrase
  • Ex. "life cycle assessment"
• Use the wildcard symbol (usually an asterisk *) to search for alternate endings of words
  • Ex. grow* will also search for growing and grows
• Use parenthesis () to nest search terms and keywords
  • Ex. ("life cycle assessment" OR LCA) AND tomato*
• You can combine Boolean searching with other searching tips 
  • Complex searches can be as ineffective as searches that are too simple

Please note that you are not confined to using only the databases listed on this guide. Please feel free to explore the other databases KU Libraries subscribe to by either finding them in our Database A-Z list or Databases by Subject list. 

​Science Databases

General Databases

Business Databases