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USD Information Literacy Lessons: Page 14

The broad focus of these lessons is understanding sources of information, including examples that can help you learn how to access information sources at USD. Each lesson is dedicated to a specific element of information competency.

Boolean Operators - NOT

The Boolean operator NOT is used when you need to exclude a search term from consideration. For instance, imagine that you did a search for delinquents but the term debt kept emerging in the results. Since you are interested in people who are delinquents and not debts that need to be repaid, you could use the NOT operator to eliminate items with the term debt, for instance, delinquents NOT debt. Only use the NOT operator if you are certain you will not lose relevant information by excluding terms from your search. The Boolean operator is circled in red.

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The relationship using the Boolean operator NOT can be expressed visually as follows:

kevin

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