Searching Google Scholar
Aug. 10, '07

chao chen

Contact: chao.chen@tufts.edu. Telephone: 617-627-2057

keywords
Access & Setting preferences   ·   Contents: advantage; disadvantage & Caveat    ·   Search Tips
Search Results: Link to Tufts Library Catalog , (free) Journal Articles & Interlibrary Loan (ILliad)

A. Getting to Google.Scholar
 B. Setting preferences in your Google.Scholar to link to the Library's books and journal articles,


 

Select "Scholar Preferences" first.

On the next screen, Three Steps to set up the links:

**Explore other preferences you can set on this page.
**Remember to


 
GoogleScholar Searching Tip 1
  • use quotation marks, "" when searching for exact phrases
  • use ~ for synonyms or related words. "~ psychoanalysis" searches for psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic and more.

Sample Research inquery: "apply psychoanalysis in the study of art history"


Search results--shown here are the top four hits on Aug. 9, 07.  
 
 
GoogleScholar Searching Tip 2
  • use OR (in upper case) to include multiple words or phrases; here we are asking to search either or both"manga" and “anime”.

Sample Research inquery: "woodblock print and its influence on Anime and Mange"


 
 
GoogleScholar Searching Tip 3
Select Advanced Search option  
 

Search by

  • title
  • author
  • publication
  • date
  • subject areas
 
GoogleScholar Search Results—links to the Library Catalog, full texts of articles and ILliad.

1. sort your findings by date (The default is ranked by relevance; see below.)
2. link to Library catalogs and Interlibrary Loan Request (ILliad)
3. link to full texts of journal articles (free to all with a Tufts ID)
4. more works by the authors
5. more related works on the topic.
6. export your citations into RefWorks


How the Search resutls are ranked:
"Google Scholar aims to sort articles the way researchers do, weighing the full text of each article, the author, the publication in which the article appears, and how often the piece has been cited in other scholarly literature. The most relevant results will always appear on the first page."
GoogleScholar Contents
Advantage: Caveat:

Google Scholar gets its content by crawling the web for scholarly materials (open access materials) as well as by getting information directly from publishers, including some of the resources to which the Tufts Libraries subscribe. Google Scholar, therefore, is useful for searching online journal collections such as JSTOR, Project Muse, ScienceDirect, and other restricted-access sources.

 

For the serious researcher, Google Scholar should be used together with many other key library sources.

  • Databases with regular cycles of updates (It can’t be determined if materials included in Google Scholar are updated from publishers on a regular, known cycle yet; some data may be out of date.)
  • Databases with more specialized subject/discipline focus and powerful search capabilities.

For example, only a database such as Early English Books Online will provide users with access to Over 125,000 titles, comprising all known English language books from the beginning of printing to 1700.

  • Print indexes
  • It is important to note that Google Scholar does not “crawl” the library’s catalog, which means that it does not provide information on every book on the Library’s shelves.
Disadvantage:

Even so, Google Scholar only searches a fraction of the published scholarly literature.

Compare searches in discipline standard databases such as MLA, Art Abstracts, PsycINFO, Medline, EconLit, ERIC, Engineering Village 2 and many more.