Google Scholar - Sixty Second Tech Tips

Christopher Bell -- School Library Journal, 6/17/2009

The people at Google have done it again! Right now, I’m lucky enough to have a budget to purchase online databases for my high school library users. However, I know that I may not always have that budget and need a plan B. Enter Google Scholar.

Currently available in a Beta version, Google Scholar has hit the big-time Web. Google Scholar takes all of the ease of use that Google is known for and applies it strictly to scholarly materials. One of the best things about this new site is that it has all the bells and whistles that typical Google offers, with some great add-ons.

On your initial search, you’ll notice that a definition for your search term is available. Next, there’s an option to look for “Recent Articles” on your topic. This quickly reduces the number of results. You are not going to find a bunch of .com’s in your results. Most will be educational institutions, organizations, and foreign entities, depending on your search topic. It also has the standard advanced search options, plus you can limit your search by topics, such as biology or business.

It’s most impressive feature? Google Scholar is linked to WorldCat.org, a free online tool that’s very useful in locating books at libraries worldwide. Finally, as many of us know, Google has been purchasing the rights to books for some time now and digitizing them for online access. Many of these titles will show up in your results. For example, I typed in Pavlov, and my first result was Pavlov’s book Conditioned Reflexes in its entirety!

I’m typically not a huge fan of Google, but I have to admit, this is a new step for providing free access to the some great knowledge. Happy researching!

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