Study of strategies used in online searching: 2. Positional Logic — an example of the importance of selecting the right Boolean operator

In online searching, the positional logic capability has made it possible to combine terms together in any order, in a word, fragment, phrase, link, sentence, or citation relationship. The advantages and disadvantages of the strategies that can be employed are reviewed. This Boolean operator capability can permit a reduced number of search statements and should therefore make search time shorter. It is also possible to include the truncation symbol in the search statement, allowing even wider selection on one input. A study was made of alternative ways that a positional statement can be formulated. Searches for material on the topic of ‘micro‐wave integrated circuits’ were carried out with the aim of finding the most economical way of generating the maximum number of relevant items while still keeping the noise level to a minimum. It was found that the ideal method for one database was not valid for another file.