Google™ Scholar

What is Google Scholar?

"Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations."1

Accessing | Full Text Options - SMU | Searching | Citing

Accessing Google Scholar

Go to TC Library's homepage: http://www.smumn.edu/tclibrary
Select the Articles tab. Click the Databases A-Z link and select Google Scholar.
Off-campus users: You will be prompted to enter your Saint Mary's University username and password after you select a database.
By accessing Google Scholar through the Library's link, you can use Full Text Options - SMU (see below for details).

Full Text Options - SMU

Full Text Options - SMU is a one-click linking system that connects you from your Google Scholar search results to the free full text of the articles via Saint Mary's databases (when available). Select the Full Text Options - SMU link to access the resource, or, if it is unavailable, easily order it through Interlibrary Loan.

Set up Full Text Options - SMU on your computer:

On the Google Scholar main page, select the Settings icon:
Select Library links, in the left sidebar.
Search for Saint Mary's. Do not abbreviate the word Saint.
Select "Saint Mary's University of Minnesota - Full Text Options - SMU".
Click Save.
If you are off campus and use Full Text Options - SMU, you will be prompted to enter your Saint Mary's ID and password (same as for Blackboard/Engage or WebMail).
Troubleshooting.

Searching tips specific to Google

Searching multiple terms

Google automatically inserts the word AND between search terms. This means every word you type into the Google search box will appear in each result.
Google treats search terms as separate words in close proximity.
- Example: peanut butter is searched as both a phrase ("peanut butter") and as pair of words relevant to, but separated from, each other (peanut oil in butter)
Be careful when choosing terms to search. Google will search for all the terms you've entered, so include only those terms relevant to your research question.
- Good example: diabetes prevention "adult-onset"
- Bad example: 55 years old and fried cheese curds and The Beetus

Using quotation marks

To search a phrase such as "No Child Left Behind" you'll want to enclose the terms in quotation marks. Quotation marks command Google to only pull results containing the phrase exactly as you've written it.

"OR" searches

If you want search results that contain one of several words, type OR in between each term. This broadens your search, and is great for searching synonyms.
- Good example: Iowa immigrants university OR "higher education" OR college
- Bad example (too broad of a search): university OR immigrants
- Note: Google ignores the word "or" unless you type it in capital letters: OR

Exclude words using a minus (-) sign

Excluding certain words from your results can be helpful when searching words common in phrases or appearing in pairs. By placing a minus (-) sign right before a word, you tell Google to exclude that word from the entirety of your search results
- Example: Twins -baseball

Using a tilde (~) to search for related terms

By including a tilde (~) directly before a search term, Google searches for relevant web pages containing your original search term(s) and related terms
- Example: ~teacher (searches for teacher, classroom, teaching, school etc.)

Citing

On the search results page, access a premade APA citation by selecting the Cite link located under the title and abstract of the article. Note: Always check the citations for formatting accuracy.

1. Google. (2009). About Google Scholar. Retrieved from http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/about.html
All screenshots & logos used with the written permission of Google.

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