To find sources that discuss your topic, it is often necessary to construct your keyword search in a way the database will understand. This requires the use of what are called Boolean operators (AND, OR, and NOT). The following uses Venn diagrams to show how the use of AND and OR can affect your results when you search for resources about the economy and Chile.

The Boolean operator AND helps combine keywords and phrases to find where the terms intersect. AND narrows your search to retrieve only those documents containing both the word ECONOMY and the word CHILE.

Economy AND Chile

The Boolean operator OR broadens your search to include documents that have the word ECONOMY as well as those that have the word CHILE. An OR search will find documents that have either "economy" or "Chile" or both.

Economy OR Chile

If your search includes several terms, be sure to note how the keywords connected by OR can be separated from other keywords with parentheses. This tells the database the proper sequence in which to search for the keywords.

(economy or industry) and Chile