Research Guides: IDST400 Challenges for the 21st Century: Using Google

Using Google

Google: One Stop Research Shop?

Everyone with internet access uses Google many times a day. It is ubiquitous. Thousands of results are at your fingertips instantly. Why bother searching anywhere else?

Google search results are not ranked by accuracy or authority of the author. Popularity of a link or the fees paid to "optimize" its placement on your list of results determines what you see.
Google offers a few search filters, based on date. Databases offer many more search filters because they are created by human indexers that assign subjects based on the meaning of the article, not only the words the author happened to use.
Most people don't search Google well. We tend to use Google for quick results and Google does that very well, offering up millions in results in less than a second. But how often do you scroll past the first page of results?
It seems that many student researchers feel that once they've searched Google, they've completed their research. College-level research should be based on many different information sources and not all of them are discoverable by using Google. Library databases provide authoritative information organized by a common vocabulary that is easily sortable and can filtered in lots of different ways.to help you discover the most suitable sources for your research.
Paywalls. Information providers don't know of your college affiliation when you do a Google search, so may offer options to sell you information. Library databases will never ask for your credit card number, but will link you to our interlibrary loan services to obtain information for free. This service is explained in more detail by clicking on the "Interlibrary Loan Services" button in the left column.

Google Advanced gives you additional ways to narrow your Google search.

Google Advanced can be a little tricky to find. The easiest way to find it is to do a search in Google. The "Advanced Search" option will be visible after you click the "Tools" button.

On the advanced search screen more options are available to narrow search results. This search will retrieve any web site that ...

1. has the word "privacy," AND...

2. has at least one of the words "solution or government or business," AND...

3. is in English, AND...

4. mentions the United States, AND..

5. has an ".edu" domain, so that it comes from an educational institution.

Google Scholar attempts to make scholarly journal articles searchable.

It is not a scholarly journal database, but a scholarly journal search engine. Search engines gather as much information as possible, without concern for the quality of the information. Google Scholar can be really helpful for finding newly published information and it can also be helpful to find additional related articles.

Example of Google Scholar entry with links to full-text and related information

In this example the search was for "privacy concerns."

"[HTML] oup.com" or "Full View" links will open up the complete full-text of this article.

The last line of the entry has a star, which will allow the researcher to save this to a Google Scholar Library. Click on "My Profile" link in the upper right to set up "My Library."

The quotation marks will show how to cite the article in several different styles.

"Cited by 163" link will produce a list of 163 articles that have cited this article. The higher the number, the more influential the article could be.

Related articles opens up a huge list of articles that share at least one reference with this paper, indicating some level of relatedness.

"All 5 versions" shows the same paper available at different sites. Some may offer full-text while others do not.

The two chevrons (>>) will open up the BVU Resources link to check if this article is available in any BVU database. If it is not available, that same screen has a link to the BVU Interlibrary Loan page (lower left), which allows the researcher to quickly place an interlibrary loan request for the source. (See Interlibrary Loan Services page for more detail).

Like Google, Google Scholar also has an "Advanced Search" option which is available by clicking the three horizontal lines in the upper left of the Google Scholar search page.