ITAL 199: Legacies of Slavery and Colonialism in Italy 1500-1850 (Hom, Winter 2023): Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a subset of the Google search engine that searches the web for what it considers to be "scholarly publications." Its focus is on providing access to journal articles that are available online through the publisher, although it will also retrieve non-scholarly material such as news announcements, academic websites (.edu), slide decks, and the like.

Google Scholar is especially good for:

• Quickly discovering whether UCSB Library has full-text access to a particular article
• Locating obscure references that are difficult to find in conventional databases, either because you have an incomplete citation or you are trying to track down an article is not included in other indexing services
• Finding gray literature such as conference proceedings, pre-prints, policy papers, and government reports

Google Scholar drawbacks::

• It cannot reliably access content within proprietary databases such as MLA or Literature Online
• It is not an index and is not organized by discipline or subject, so you cannot focus your search to, say, literary topics
• It cannot limit, organize, filter, or sort your searches
• It is NOT a full-text database.  Most records in Google Scholar are citations, not articles in their entirety
• It is not very good at tracking down print articles
• You may get a long list of results but you will only have access to the full text of articles that UCSB Library has paid subscriptions for (if you have set up Library Links), or that are open access
• Searches are not nearly as precise as they are in the library's subscription databases

Learn how you can connect UCSB Library to Google Scholar to easily access the full text of an article through UC Library Search.

Connecting Google Scholar to UCSB Library Full-Text Resources from UCSB Library on Vimeo.

Transcript:

Title: Connecting Google Scholar to UCSB Library Full-Text Resources: Teaching & Learning Series

Body: Starting on the Google Scholar homepage, login to Google using your UCSB NetID and password. Once you are logged in, find the menu in the top left corner of the screen and select the “settings” option, then the “library links” option. In the search box, enter “University of California, Santa Barbara” and search. Find the “Get it At UC” option and make sure the box is checked, then save your changes. Now, you can search for full-text articles in UCSB Library from Google Scholar! On the Google Scholar homepage, enter your search terms and search. Look for the “Get it at UC” links to access the full-text resource through the Library website. You’ve done it! Having trouble? Ask for help. Need help with your research? Visit us online: library.ucsb.edu/ask