How to Use Encyclopedia Britannica Online

There are two ways to search Britannica Online: Natural Language Searching and Boolean Searching

Because Natural Language retrieves articles with any of the words entered, this kind of search can produce very large results. For more precise searching, we recommend Boolean Searching.

Type a word, words or phrase in the box and click on search. Britannica searches for articles that contain one or more of the words you typed.

Example:

Result: Britannica ignores small words such as "in" and "the" and then searches for any of the other words in the phrase. It responds with a list of articles ranked in order of relevance to the words or phrase you entered.

At this point, if you want to quickly narrow your search you can click on the option at the top of the results screen that allows you to restrict your search to articles containing all of your search terms. This re-runs your search as a Boolean AND search.

Boolean Searching

Boolean searching allows you to use connecting words (operators) such as AND, ADJ (adjacent), OR and NOT. This allows you to refine your search to deliver only those articles most useful to you. Shortcuts can also be used in place of using the words AND, NOT, OR, ADJ.

Boolean Operator	Example	Search will look for articles that contain:	Shortcut	Example
AND	birds and behavior	both "birds" and "behavior"	+	birds +behavior
ADJ	gun adj control	the phrase "gun control"	" "	"gun control"
NOT	Apple not computer	apple but not computer	-	Apple -computer
OR	dolphin or whale	either or both of these terms	simply type terms with no operator	dolphin whale

Remember: An "*" can be used as a truncation (or wildcard) symbol to retrieve multiple endings. For example, if you type child* you will retrieve child, children, or childhood.

Exploring your results:

Britannica will respond to your search with a list of article titles and a short excerpt. For the full information click on the title. Your search terms will be highlighted. Once you are looking at the full article, you may encounter the following:

Long articles may have a table of contents, which outlines the subject matter of the article. You may click the appropriate link in the table of contents to jump to the section you want.
Articles may contain highlighted links that will lead you to another entry in Britannica that deals with that specific idea.
Index Entry will link you to information on your topic embedded in other articles.
Internet Links will open a secondary browser window and link you to Britannica's Internet directory. It automatically re-runs your search in this directory and provides descriptions of related World Wide Web sites. Important: To return to Britannica Online, click on the box with the X to close the secondary browser window.
If there are images associated with the article, they will appear as small "thumbnail" boxes along the right hand side of the screen. Click on the image to enlarge.

For additional help, click on the Help button at the top of the screen or ask a Reference Librarian.