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Students typically begin research with everyday conversational questions, which is a natural and intuitive way to think about information needs. However, search tools do not always interpret natural language the way people do, and this can affect our search results.
This short, illustrated zine teaches students how to run advanced searches. It covers Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), truncation (*), and phrase searching (""). It also situates these search strategies in relation to how algorithms rank results, prompting students to think about why they matter from a technical and social perspective.
It takes 5-7 minutes to read and can be used as a flipped classroom assignment or a quick classroom activity.
Companion Activity: You can pair this reading with Boolean's Pizza Palace: From Customer Orders to Search Queries, a 3-minute gamified assessment: https://sandbox.acrl.org/resources/booleans-pizza-palace-costumer-orders-search-queries
Learning Objectives: By the end of this activity, students will be able to:
- Identify the function of Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), truncation (*), and quotation marks ("") in a search query.
- Recognize the role of advanced search strategies in retrieving more relevant results from algorithm-driven systems.
Materials needed:
- Zine: Canva template to download and/or remix (digital and print versions included): https://canva.link/yogdqk8a90o9ymk
Versión en español: https://sandbox.acrl.org/resources/aprende-booleano-un-zine-ilustrado