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



