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Google Scholar and UT Library Subscriptions - A great partnership

Google Scholar and UT library subscriptions together are useful in locating information complement each other in locating information.

The Pluses - See image below

  • GoogleScholar includes peer reviewed papers, theses, books, patents, case law, abstracts and often free articles. These items come from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and other scholarly organizations.
  • Google Scholar may find articles and information that databases  PubMed and CINAHL do not.
  • Google Scholar searches the full text of most articles and then ranks the results according to relevance and number of citations. PubMed and other databases do not search full text.
     
  • Google Scholar is a good discovery tool because it is multidisciplinary, often locating articles within the scope of inquiry but outside one's discipline. 
  • One of a few tools that tracks citations - how often an article is cited
     
  • Google Scholar Search tips include
    •  Finding full text of article - including articles through UToledoLibrary subscriptions
    •  How to get better answers
       
  •  When signed into Google one can
    • Export citation to EndNote  - use download icon after selecting article (s) 
    •  Save article in a library
    •  Set up alerts

Google Scholar - The Limitations

Google Scholar Limitations

 Many of the results are not full text—However one can request free copies of articles and books through Interlibrary Loan

  •  Search cannot be limited to peer reviewed
  •  No option to browse by title
  •  No subject searching option
  •  Limited Advanced Search options
  • Many of the results are not full text-However one can request free copies of articles and books through Interlibrary Loan

 

See UToledo Subscription... page for tips on taking advantage of UToledo database subject terms and keywords to improve Google searches.

Acknowledgements (GoogleScholar)

This LibGuide was largely based on GoogleScholar on HED 6510 The American College Student by UToledo Librarian Wade Lee-Smith.
Go to the above URL to see how Google results are arranged.

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