Google Scholar

Everyone has heard of Google, and most of us use it as our main search engine, but have you heard of Google Scholar? Don’t be surprised if you haven’t, Google has a habit of coming up with a great idea, making it available, and then not doing much to promote it. Google Scholar is still in ‘beta’ mode – which means that it isn’t officially ready for prime-time – but it has been in beta mode for years, so don’t let that stop you exploring its usefulness.

The main difference between Google and Google Scholar is that the content that is indexed on Scholar is only made available by an agreement between Google and some of the major academic publishers. Most of the time this content is hard to find, even with the main Google search engine, and when you have found it you then have the problem of working out whether you have access to it or not.

Using Google Scholar and combining it with the Library’s SFX article linking service will help get over that hurdle. So how does it work?

First, go to http://scholar.google.co.uk

Then click on the ‘Scholar Preferences’ link.

Under the ‘Library Links’ section you will see a search box – type ‘lancaster university’ into that box and then click on the ‘Find Library’ button. You should find that ‘Lancaster University – SFX@Lancaster’ is one of the options that are suggested for you. Select ‘Lancaster University – SFX@Lancaster’ and then click on the ‘Save Preferences’ button. That’s it!

Now, when you search Google Scholar you will see Lancaster’s SFX links appearing in the list of results. I’ve done a search on ‘global warming’ and have a list of results – here are the first three:

Most of the time, when you click on the title of the article you will be directed to the publisher’s Web site and the full text of that article. But the Library doesn’t always subscribe to that version. We may subscribe to that journal from another supplier, but you wouldn’t know that unless you clicked on the SFX link. Try it and see if you think it’s a useful addition to using Google, MetaLib et al.