AI and Society (LB 492, Jackson): Search Tips

Boolean operators are the words AND and OR. Databases treat them like mathematical operators (plus, minus, etc.), so you can use them to make your search better and faster.

AND = show me articles that contain both of these keywords. Use this to combine different concepts in your search.

Example: artificial intelligence AND medical imaging

OR  = show me articles that contain one of these keywords.Use this for synonyms. If you're not seeing relevant results right away, it might be that authors are using a different term for your topic, or spelling the same term a different way. 

Example: United States OR USA OR US OR America

You can also string Booleans together like algebra--anything within the parenthesis happens together and happens first.

Example: (AI OR artificial intelligence) AND (health OR medicine)

This example will search for articles that have at least one of the AI terms and at least one of the health terms.

• To find ideas about where AI is being used in different professions, try looking at the news releases or blog posts of professional organizations listed on previous pages of this guide.
• Don't try a database until you have an application or area you'd like to look at. The results are so broad that you may not get anything useful if you just search for AI. 
• If you don't get results on your topic at first, make your search more specific. I didn't find anything useful when I searched for artificial intelligence AND mapping, but got better results for artificial intelligence AND mapping AND geography. 
• If you're searching in a database, search for artificial intelligence or (artificial intelligence OR AI) instead of AI by itself. You might need to put quotes around "artificial intelligence" so the database treats it as a phrase. 

• Break up longer phrases into smaller phrases (no longer than 2 or 3 words). Make sure that each phrase you use only contains one topic. For example, instead of entering "first generation college students at a four-year institution," you could enter first generation AND university.
• Leave out shorter words like at or the or at.
• Try to reduce redundancy in your keywords if you can. For example, in college students AND counselor AND mental health, you can take out the mental health part. The majority of counselors that college students might meet with are mental health counselors, so you don't need to give the database both terms. 
• To make sure that the database searches for a phrase as a phrase, rather than 2 or three separate words, you can put the phrase in quotes, like this: "artificial intelligence." In general, it's best to start searching without the quotes, but if you notice that you're getting results only having to do with one word or the other, put the quotes in.