Google Scholar and the Academic Web

Laura JeffreyResearcher Training Librarian

Outline

• Intelligent web searching• Google Scholar• Academic web• Wider web• Hidden web

Intelligent web searching

• What are you looking for?– Breadth or precision– Single document or comprehensive coverage

• How are you searching?– Targeted searching• Combining terms = narrow search; AND is assumed• OR, “phrase”, -not, ˜synonym, words**in between,

site:ac.uk, date:months

– Evaluating results

Intelligent web searching

• What are you looking for?• How are you searching?• What tools are you using?– Variety of access points– Range of search engines

Google Scholar

• What it includes• How to search effectively– + include common words, letters or numbers– - excludes all results that include this search term– “phrase search”– OR for either of your search terms– intitle: only returns results that include your

search term in the document's title.

Google Scholar

• Advanced features– Citations, grouped articles, related articles, alerts,

set up ConneXions off campus, links to Endnote downloads

Google Scholar

Advantages over library databases

• More results

Advantages over library databases

• More results• Broader range of resource types e.g. books,

journal articles, theses• Information from range of sources e.g.

databases, publishers, OA repositories• Can have better date coverage

Disadvantages

• Too many results(?)• Less quality control• Doesn’t index all databases• Inconsistent level of bibliographic information• Some non-academic document types e.g.

handbooks• Less developed search options and ability to

limit searches

Hands-on

• Link to Google Scholar• Set up preferences• Search using advanced search screen• Explore advanced options e.g. alerts• How does it compare with library databases

you use?

Academic resources

• Full text, taster or bibliographic details• Virtual libraries– Librarians’ Index to the Internet, WWW Virtual Library

• Generic portals– BUBL, Pinakes, Infomine, Intute

• Subject portals– TechXtra, Voice of the Shuttle, Scirus

Academic resources

• Books– Google Books, Gutenberg Project, Universal

Library, Alex

• Journal ToCs– ticTOCs, My Favourite Journals , CiteULike Current

Issues

Academic resources

Open Access and repositories

• Institutional: DRO, Durham e-Theses, D-space at MIT

• Subject specific: ArXiv, British History Online• Harvesters: OAIster, Driver

• …and of course Google Scholar

Hands-on

• Try and access full text academic resources using freely available search engines and not Google Scholar

The wider web

• Different search engines have different search options

• They give different results• They present them in a different order– ranking depends on location of word in title,

headings, frequency, proximity

Types of search engine

• Keyword• Directory• Real time• Content specific• Meta-search engines• Comparative search engines• International search engines

Netvibes page

Hidden web

• Search engines can access only about 16% of the available information on the WWW.

• Many library databases are not indexed by Google Scholar and other search engines.

• If they are, they may not be very visible.

Library web pages

Access to tools

• Handouts and slides are available at www.dur.ac.uk/library/research/training/

• Most of the links mentioned in today’s session are included in the handout

• Or via the web page:www.netvibes.com/intelligentwebsearch#Welcome!

Evaluation

Please say what you thought of this session in the evaluation sheet in front of you

More information • Laura Jeffrey – l.k.s.jeffrey@durham.ac.uk or 0191 3342970

• Liaison Librarian for your department– www.dur.ac.uk/library/resources/subject/