How to use CD-ROMs and other databases

Using NOT

You can combine your search terms to try and limit the amount of material or "hits" you get, or to eliminate irrelevant terms. To do this you can use a Boolean operator, NOT.

The NOT operator is used to reduce the number of hits you get. When you use NOT the search engine only returns records that do not have any terms that you do not want in them. For instance if you use music not jazz the database engine will only return records that have the word music but do not have the word jazz in them.

Use with care as you may be eliminating useful records. In the example above you would miss out on records that have information about types of music including jazz.

NOTE: in some search engines and databases you need to type AND NOT to achieve this.