Transcript for:
Mastering Boolean Logic in PubMed Searches

Hi, this is Michelle Swab from the Health Sciences Library. This video demonstrates how to use Boolean logic to combine MeSH terms. So here I am back at PubMed. I'm going to click on Advance to access my search history and this will be your search history will be retained for up to 24 hours. The first thing I'm going to do is combine the synonymous terms or the related terms with OR.

So number 18, nurses, or number 22, nursing, or number 24, nurses role. So those are all related terms. Then what I'm going to do is add to history to bring it down to my search history.

Notice the number of items I've found has increased. Now what I need to do is combine my main concepts with AND. So number 15 and number 28, which is 18 or 22 or 24. This greatly reduces the number of items that are retrieved. So now I'm at 92 items. I can click on the number to access the list.

So I bet all along you've been wondering, what about... the concept of older adults and I'm actually going to apply a filter to get at that information. So if I click on ages and then click on age plus 65 years I'm going to go down from 92 items to 73 items I think it is. You can access additional filters here on the left.

So for example I could show language filters and filter to English. This will reduce the number of articles I retrieve even more. So now I'm at 65.