Searching MELVYL: Booleans

Scope

• MELVYL supports the standard Booleans:
  • and or &
  • or
  • and not [another form of "not"]
• The execution order is left to right unless some operations are inside of parentheses.

and

• Use the Boolean operator and to combine fields (indexes) in a search request to better target your results. and reduces the number or results in your search.
• Examples:
  • find pa hemingway and tw old man

    find su internet and added newest

    find tw dogs and form book and date 1996-1998

• Notes:
  • and also can be used to add on to an existing search result. For example "and cats" can be added to the above search merely by type the words after the first search is executed. This further narrows the search and reduces the number of results.
    • CAT->and cats
  • In the pa index, however, the word and is not ignored. Consequently, the following examples find the exactly same books that have personal authors Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes
    • f pa hughes and pa plath

      f pa plath and hughes

or

• Use the Boolean operator or to combine search terms and/or fields (indexes) in a search request to broaden your search result. or means "either...or".
• For example,

  f au hughes, ted or au plath, sylvia

  • retrieves records that were written by either author (or both).

  f pa hughes, ted and su plath, sylvia

  • retrieves records that were written by Hughes on Plath
• or can also be used to modify (enlarge the range of results of) an existing search
• For example:

  After the search "f pa hughes, ted and su plath, sylvia" is conducted, you can enlarge the potential range of subjects as following.

  • or su poets or tw biography

    This is assuming that Hughes wrote books on the subject of poetry (logical) and may have written a biography or autobiography.

and not

• Use the Boolean operator and not to combine search terms and/or fields (indexes) in order to better target the results.
• and not limits the number of resulting records.
• For example,

  f pa hughes, ted and not su plath, sylvia

  • finds books by Ted Hughes that are not about Sylvia Plath.

  f tw internet and not html

  • finds books that have the word "Internet" in the title but not the acronym "HTML".

  f su berlin and not lan english

  • finds books about Berlin that are not in English.

  and not can also be used to modify the results of a previous search.

  After the search "f su berlin and not lan english" you can further narrow the results by eliminating the books in French.

  and not lan french

  NOTE: Be very careful when using and not because you could eliminate some desirable records if those contain both the word or concept you want as well as the one you want to exclude.

To: LT65 INDEX	To: GREENSHEET	To:	To: TOP OF PAGE:
So many urls. So little time. TM
(c) 1996-2003 - optimized for Netscape & 800x600 display