Skip to Main Content

Library Research Tutorial

Boolean Searching: NOT

Boolean searching allows you to combine your keywords and related terms with operators, such as AND, OR, and NOT, to find the most relevant results possible from your search.


Boolean NOT

 

NOT is used to tell the database that you want to exclude results that mention a particular word or concept. For example, if you wanted to exclude articles focused on online education and social media in community colleges, the search statement would be: (social media OR Facebook OR Twitter) AND (online classroom OR distance education OR online learning) NOT community college