Using Google Scholar Ronald Wirtz, Ph.D.Calvin T. Ryan LibraryDec Finding Scholarly Information With A Popular Search Engine Tool

Typical Google Basic Search Many searchers will begin their search by simply typing simple keywords or related terms into the Google search box. This typically results in a very large number of “hits,” and searchers will scroll inefficiently through the results to locate seemingly useful information. This search found nearly two million hits.

Using Google Advanced Search Google Advanced Search is much more effective in finding useful information, since it provides several limiters, including exact phrasing, elimination of specific domains, limitation to specific language, limit- ing by file type, web page publication date, and by country of the server where the page(s) are located.

Problems With Typical Searches Restricting the search as shown on the previous screen reduces the “hits” from nearly two million to just one hundred nineteen thousand. Still too many, but a big improvement over the previous search. However, the search finds only “hits,” and does not provide any means of determining quality.

Using Google Scholar Google Scholar is a tool that allows the searcher to greatly reduce the number of “false hits,” while at the same time finding results that are generally of considerably higher quality in that many of them link to documents published in scholarly media. Use the drop-down list under the “more” text button and click on Scholar.

Basic Google Scholar Search When you click on the Google Scholar drop- down link, a Scholar search is carried out automatically based on how your previous search had been set up. In this case, the number of “hits” was reduced from 119,000 to 18,500 with one mouse click– still too many “hits.”

Limiting from Scholar Results You can apply additional limiters by choosing from the drop-down lists on the Scholar results page.

Google Scholar Advanced Search Advanced Google Scholar Search allows you to refine your search to an even greater degree. Advanced Google Scholar Search can be very useful, but it does have some limitations. It does not easily distinguish between articles, books, reviews, and some other types of “scholarly” materials. It frequently links to for- profit publishers’ sites that request substantial payment for full-text items.

Linking From Scholar Results Click on the title or on Library Search to find If full-text is available. Google Scholar may link to articles from the UNK databases.

Article Linker Software UNK’s Article Linker software will find each database in which a particular article is located, and will provide a link to that article. This is the same thing that occurs when you search within a database.

Links from Scholar to UNK Databases This search found Many links to full- text documents in UNK Library databases. When you are on campus or logged into a Google account, and have specified the UNK Library as your home resource, Google can detect databases to which UNK subscribes.

Limits on Availability of Full Text Links When you click on the “Full UNK Library” link, you will see a page that indicates the location of the article in the UNK subscription database. This is very useful while You are a UNK student or faculty member, but the links will not be available when your association with UNK ends.

The Citation and Abstracts Page When you click On the link, a citation and abstract page appears. From this page you can also save, , cite, print or view the full text.

PDFs and the Printed Article This is the PDF full text of the article. It is identical in content, layout & pagination to the printed version.

Using the Citation Tool When you click on the Cite link, several citation formats appear. You can copy and paste the appropriate citation into the Works Cited page of your paper.

Please Complete At this point you should be able to search somewhat productively with Google Scholar. Please click on the link above to complete an evaluation of this brief online presentation. Remember that if you need help in searching, to use the 24/7 & chat links. Click this link Click this link Thanks!