Library Blog

I know I shouldn't use websites for my paper, but what about Google Scholar?

Ms. Information answers your questions

Research papers can be daunting, especially when you're asked to find information in new ways. Most people like to stay with what is familiar to them, which is why many students like to find information for their papers online, which makes sense.  You go to Google, or Yahoo, or Ask.com when you want to find a good restaurant, a movie review, or to settle an argument over whether they would have really driven those cars in 1972 in a movie you're watching - and you almost always find the answer. 

You’re probably already aware that you’re not going to find scholarly articles (what is a scholarly article?) by searching Google, but many students have discovered Google Scholar.  So the question remains, what is Google Scholar, and is it any good?

Google Scholar is a search engine that searches for scholarly articles that are freely available online.  If a journal is accessible only to subscribers, that full text will not be available, but the abstract may be (which is why it’s asking you to pay for it)*.  In contrast, the library pays for thousands of journal subscriptions (which you pay with your tuition), which is what you’re searching when you use a library database. And many of those articles you find for a price on Google Scholar are available for free through the library!  For more information about how Google Scholar works click here.

One feature Google Scholar has that could improve your searching is its ability to sync with our library.  This means that you can configure Google Scholar to pick up

Roosevelt University's Library holdings, which will then allow you to read the full-text of articles that Google Scholar found which Roosevelt University subscribes to. A word of caution, though: Google Scholar is by no means searching all of RU's library's journal holdings, but rather allowing you a simplified way of accessing articles that RU owns that also happen to come up in your Google Scholar list of results.  If you are on campus this will happen automatically.  If you’re off campus, and you link through Roosevelt library (how to do this below**), you can authenticate yourself with your student-ID number to see the full text of these articles. In the result below, for example if you click on 'Online Articles', you will be taken directly to a Roosevelt University page that lets you know if we have the article.

You'll be taken to a page that looks like this:                                                                                                                     

From here, you can follow the 'Go' link to read the article, which you're able to do because the RU Library pays for a subscription to the journal. Did you have any idea that the Library and Google Scholar were such tight pals?

Now, we must deal with the second part of our questions - should you use Google Scholar? 

A Code for Finding Journal Articles

One of the most frustrating aspects of searching for articles in a database is not knowing which keywords to use to find information.  This can especially be hard when researching a type of business or an industry. The business type you are researching can seem so specific that it gets frustrating weeding through irrelevant articles, or it can be so obscure that you find little or no articles. Well, here's a tip that will help you find journal articles about businesses and industries, no matter how specific or obscure: find out how the government classifies your business or industry. 

How do you do that?  The government uses a system called NAICS (pronounced "nakes"), which stands for North American Industry Classification System.  It was developed along with the governments of Canada and Mexico as a way to classify businesses in order to collect statistical data about the business economies of those nations.  Industries are given a code, usually 6 digits long, which identifies their primary type of business. 

In library article databases provided by EBSCO, including Academic Search Premier and Business Source Premier, you have the ability to search for articles using a NAICS code, because articles in these databases are indexed with the NAICS codes that are relevant to that article.  So if you find the NAICS code for the industry you are researching, you can enter that code in those databases and get of set of articles that are indexed with that code. 

Finding the correct NAICS code can be a little tricky.  There is a NAICS website which includes a code search (http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/naics.html).  The search is very strict, so it is best to search using a single keyword here; for instance, rather than searching "floral arrangements" search "floral," "flower," or "florist."  What may work a little better is to go to Google and search "NAICS" along with the industry you are looking for.  For instance, if you go to the NAICS site and search "event planning" you won't get results, but if you Google "NAICS event planning," the first result you get is an announcement from the Census bureau explaining that NAICS code 561920 covers the activities done on a daily basis by event planners.

With that code in hand, you can now go to Academic Search Premier or Business Source Premier and find articles indexed with this code.  In one of the keyword boxes type IC along with your NAICS code in quotes (for example: IC "561920").  Click the Search button, and you will get a list of articles indexed with that code.  Since NAICS codes often cover a number of different industries, you may want to narrow the results down by entering in keywords in the additional keyword boxes. 

If you need additional assistance with NAICS, or with researching businesses and industries, contact a reference librarian at our Downtown, Schaumburg, or CPA library.