Some New Things I Have Learned About Google Scholar

In my class, Intro to Online Teaching, one of the discussion threads happened to address Google Scholar. As a fan of this topic, I was happy to see this discussion. It is a tool I used extensively while working on my dissertation. Unfortunately, a number of class members were not aware of this resource until reading about it in the textbook, The Theory and Practice of Online Learning edited by Terry Anderson.

Google Scholar is a powerful academic search engine reaching across countless resources as only Google can do. Best of all, Google also has ties to local academic libraries.

Finding Local Resources

If you find a resource, you can have it indicate whether it is available from your local library, the University of Wyoming Library, for example.

Google Scholar

To have the post appear, you must add the library to your Google Scholar settings. Note: the library must be a participant with Google Scholar, which the University of Wyoming Library is. Here are the steps:

1. Go to http://scholar.google.com/
2. Click on the Settings link.
   

   Google Scholar Settings link

3. Select Library links from the left-hand menu.
4. Type in the name of your library (1), click on the search button (2), select up to five libraries (3), and finally, click on the Save button (4).

Adding a library to Google Scholar

Tracking Citations

With Google Scholar, you can also track your citations. While I only have one article published, I thought it was pretty cool to see the results.

Skrabut’s Google Citations

To see citations for your journal articles, simply go to Google Scholar and click on the My Citations link. The site will walk you through the process.

Google Scholar

As one of the learners pointed out, conducting a search with Google Scholar is as comfortable as doing a regular search. However, you can get more out of Google Scholar by conducting better searches. Here are more tips for conducting searches with Google Scholar:  http://www.google.com/intl/en/scholar/help.html

Google Scholar has been a much-used tool in my academic toolbox., I hope you add it to your toolbox.

Additional Reading

• Understanding Google Scholar to Get the Information You Want