Search Basics

Nesting or String searches utilize parentheses to clarifiy relationships between terms and to specify the order the search should be run. The keywords inside the parentheses are required to be searched first and generally those items are linked by the Boolean Operator "OR."

This method is useful for more comprehensive searches when you want to link two or more concepts that might use different spellings, acronyms, synonyms or might be represented by a number of different terms.  See the examples below.

(“al Qaeda” OR “al Quida” OR “al-Qa'ida) AND (insurgency OR guerrilla OR “irregular warfare”) AND terrorism