Go Google Scholar: Overview

Get started by searching Google Scholar at  http://scholar.google.com/

Right-click the link to open it in a new window!

Look familiar?  Yep!  It's powered by Google.  The difference lay in the algorithm used to dig DEEP and focus in on academic resources.

When results are displayed...

You can use the tools located here to take control. Search articles, case law, or your own library of saved artilces (if you're logged into Google).  Limit results by currency OR throw out everything but the most recently posted content.  You can even elect to include citations for your articles in three popular styles (MLA, APA, and Chicago).  

What is Google Scholar?
Google Scholar was created by Google to help users mine the web for literature suitable for scholarly research. 

Why Google Scholar?
The information on the web is vast.  Google searches "horizontally" across the web, bringing back results that live on the surface.  Google scholar mines deeper. The algorithm used by this search tool specifically targets journal articles, theses, abstracts and other materials published by publishers, orgaznizations and repositories that produce high-level academic information.  

Focus on credibility:
According to Google, the Google Scholar search tool "aims to rank documents the way researchers do, weighing the full text of each document, where it was published, who it was written by, as well as how often and how recently it has been cited in other scholarly literature."  Whats more, these credibility points are highlighted by Google Scholar, offering researchers the information they need to better cite (and thus borrow) the credibility of the resources they use. 

With Google Scholar, you'll be able to:

• Identify authors and read their profiles.
• Check who cites the document as part of your evaluation of credibility.
• Access and study works cited by scholarly documents
• Explore works related to each document by author, publication, and other associations.
• Read abstracts of documents housed in secured databases subscribed to by your library.
• Locate full-text document of many articles housed on the open web.