Gerald Louw presented on Google Scholar and discussed its goals, functionality, and search strategies. Google Scholar was launched in 2004 and contains scholarly literature like journal articles, books, and citations. It allows users to set preferences, create alerts, and view citation metrics. Advanced search features allow restricting searches by date, publication, or field. While it covers many subjects and languages, it still has gaps in top journals. Strategies like cited reference searching, building block searches, and pearl growing can aid research.

1. GOOGLE SCHOLAR
Presented by
Gerald Louw

2. GOALS
 How Google Scholar works
 Settings in Google Scholar
 Strategies for searching
 Use a citation management tool in Google Scholar
 Evaluating Websites

3. GOOGLE SCHOLAR
 Debut in November 2004
 Content has grown significantly
 Simplicity, Google Scholar, popular
 Google Books project has given boost to content
 Not really a subset to Google search
 Not all publishers of academic information
 Resource devoted to scholarly literature
 Journal articles, books, citations, conference
proceedings

4. SETTINGS IN GOOGLE SCHOLAR

5. OFF CAMPUS LOG IN

6. SETTING GOOGLE SCHOLAR

7. SETTING GOOGLE SCHOLAR

8. SETTING GOOGLE SCHOLAR

9. GOOGLE SCHOLAR ALERTS

10. CREATING AN ALERT

11. GOOGLE SCHOLAR METRICS FOR
PUBLICATIONS

12. GOOGLE SCHOLAR AUTHOR CITATIONS

13. GOOGLE SCHOLAR JOURNAL IMPACT FACTOR

14. SEARCH METHODS
 Cited Reference Search
 One relevant article/ book, lead to other references
 Ask supervisor for recommendation for key article
 Building Block Search
 Formulate queries based on the elements or concept
groups “OR”- ing synonyms, using controlled or free
vocabulary.
 Pearl growing
 Use the characteristics of the “pearl” to successively
grow a set of related documents: use assigned index
terms-words, names, citations, publication data, or
structural and statistical properties to formulate queries
to retrieve subsequent sets.

15. SEARCHING
 AND between words
 + to include common words
 “quotation marks” to search for a phrase
 - to exclude from search
 OR for either word search
 Author: for author search
 Intitle: to search title
 Restrict by date and publication
 Advance Search

16. ADVANCE SEARCH

17. ADVANCE SEARCH

18. UNDERSTANDING SEARCH RESULTS

19. UNDERSTANDING SEARCH RESULTS

20. PROS AND CONS OF GOOGLE SCHOLAR
 Pros
 Content has grown
 Google Books project has enhanced the content
 Includes languages other than English
 Library links is good to identify sources locally
 Delivering citation counts
 Cons
 Still gaps in top ranking journals
 Some subjects are covered more than others
 It is unclear how results are ordered

21. ACCESS AN ARTICLE YOUR INSTITUTION IS
NOT SUBSCRIBED TO
 Your library through Inter Library Loans
 Search Google Scholar on the title and author to
see if it points you to a free copy.
 Search JSTOR for older articles
 Search for the author on Google, the author might
provide a link to the full text.
 Search on Open Access search engines such as
OAlster.
 Search your library catalogue
 Search for the journal it might have a website that
makes the article freely available

22. REFERENCE LIST
 Badke, W. B. (2008). Research strategies: Finding
your way through the information fog. New York:
iUniverse
 Jacsó, P. (February 22, 2008). Google Scholar
revisited. Online Information Review, 32, 1, 102-
114.
 Ó, D. N. (2012). Internet research skills. London: SAGE.
 Wang, Y., & Howard, P. (January 01, 2012). Google
Scholar Usage: An Academic Library's Experience.
Journal of Web Librarianship, 6, 2, 94-108.

23. THANK YOU