Looking for Love--the Boolean Way

From Library Instruction Wiki

I did this activity on Valentine's Day. I asked students to imagine an online dating service created by a librarian. We started out by brainstorming words that would describe a dream date. They came up with the usual suspects: "smart," "funny," "good-looking," and "friendly." I then explained how, in order for this librarian-designed version of Match.com to work, they would also need to come up with other words that described these characteristics. They quickly added "intelligent," "humorous," "hot," "kind," etc. Then we worked out where the ANDs and ORs would go for the search to make logical sense. They seemed to get the hang of it--after all, who wants a date who is smart OR funny? (Brief mention was also made of NOT, as in, we'd all prefer a date who is NOT a jerk.)

When we moved on to looking at the library catalog and databases, I referred back to our "dream date" and showed them how using AND and OR affects search results. They seemed to make this leap without much trouble, and this approach made teaching a familiar old topic a lot more fun for me.

Miranda Bennett - University of Houston