I have been catching up on my reading and came across this short piece in the March CILIP Update by Emily Houghton. In the piece she describes how she came across an example of how a librarian taught his university students about Boolean operators using the folowing approach
Gin and whiskey bottles were acquired and filled with plain or coloured water. A bottle of tonic water and several glasses were also brought in.
We always start any presentations concerning a tool that requires Boolean searching, explaining and, or and not. We now begin this discussion with explaining how bartenders use Boolean logic every day to fill their customers’ mixed drink orders.
Using this inspiration Emily created a poster taking inspiration from this asking for a drink approach
- Gin AND Tonic
- Gin OR Tonic
- Gin NOT Tonic
- Tonic NOT Gin
This has led Emily to think about other combinations such as using chocolate e.g chocolate AND milk AND nut NOT fruit.
As the article says
You will have much more success when you are teaching students how to improve their internet search results using Boolean operators if you use some tasty, memorable examples from everyday life.
I can see this being used across the sectors not just with university students. I certainly know lots of people who could relate to the chocolate and the asking for a drinks approach.
A former colleague, a school librarian from a school in Stirling used to use William Wallace as her Boolean examples as the Wallace munument was on their door step.
My thanks to Emily for highlighting this. If you are going to Umbrella look out for Emily.
N.B. They must be using Irish whiskey bottles and not Scotch whisky in the quoted example.
Originally added by Christine Irving