How to use Google Scholar

Google Scholar works similarly to the Google that we all know and love, but limits the results to scholarly items.

If you want to use Google Scholar,

2. Click on the letter G for Google Scholar.

3. Scroll down to find Google Scholar and click on the red title link.

4. If you have a Google account, sign in in the upper right corner so that you can save your settings.

5.  Click on three vertical lines on the top left corner. A list will appear. Click on Settings button at the end of the list to set your setting preferences.

6. At the bottom of the new page under the Bibliographic Manager heading, select "Show links to import into. . ." and from the dropdown list next to it, choose EndNote and then click save.

7. Reopen the Settings options and click on the Library Links button. Search for the University of Utah and click on the checkboxes next to both of the University of Utah and Open WorldCat options. Click save.

WorldCat's search covers over 30 million records of any type of material cataloged by OCLC member libraries, including manuscripts written as early as the 11th century. The database has holdings information for many US and some foreign libraries, and is updated daily. WorldCat Quick Search is also available to the general public.

8. Search in Google Scholar, use keyword searches and the asterisk * truncates words. For example, searching for educ* will bring back items with the words educate, educated, and education. Using AND between words tells the search engine to find all of the words in every result, while OR tells it to find any of the words in the result. Parenthesis allow you to combine multiple AND and OR statement.

9. Use the limiters on the left side of the page to narrow down the results to the last ten years or whatever custom range you prefer.

10. If the item says "Book" next to the title, search for the title in the library catalog.

11. If the item has a Get It @UU link or a PDF button, click there to get the full text.

12. Even if you don't see that PDF button, click on the article title because there may be a full text link available.

13. Click on Cited by to find documents cited to your desired article or book. It will open a list of those documents and provide you more knowledge about the topic.

14. Click on Cite link to see the different citation formats. Although the citations are not always correct but are a good starting point.

15. If you don't have time to read the article at that moment, you can save it in your My Library.

16. When you want to read it, open the article in your My Library.

17. If the author name is underlined. It means that Google Scholar provides more info about his/her other works. You might want to click on the underlined name.

18. In the new page, you can find more info about the author works and also detailed info about works of other authors who have cited to his/her works. Under City By click on the number next to each article to get detailed info about that particular article.

19. You can click on FOLLOW button to receive new articles by this author, new citations to this author and new articles related to this author's research. Under author's profile you can also click on the groups with which this author might be connected and get more info about those groups.