Introduction to Databases: Google Scholar Find It @ Cedar Crest

Google Scholar is a great way to begin research on a topic.  You should always access Google Scholar through Databases A-Z or the Research Guide pages so that the information you look at while in the Library is the same as when you look from off campus.

+	use for AND  use to include terms in your search   + is assumed between terms	nursing license    nursing + license
OR	OR must be capitalized	habitat OR environment
-	use for NOT  use to exclude terms in your search	Portland - Oregon
" "	use for more exact phrase searching	"The Chronicle of HigherEducation"
*	The “*” acts as the wildcard character in Google and searches for a missing word or words. Each “*” replaces an unidentified number of wildcard keywords.	Congress voted * the * bill (might find “congress voted to pass the animal rights bill”)
Stemming	Google automatically finds various extensions or derivatives of your keywords – no special characters or commands are required. It also seems to automatically un-stem your keywords.	instruction (finds instruction, instructions, instructing, instructor, instruct, etc.)

 

 

• Searches are not case sensitive (except OR)
• The order of your keywords matters because Google ranks the first keyword higher than the second keyword, and the second higher than the third keyword, etc.
• Google ignores “noise” or “stop” words such as of, am, who, etc.
• Google ignores most punctuations and special characters with a few exceptions
• Google does not offer proximity searching

This is the Google Scholar basic search page that you will see when you choose Google Scholar from Databases A-Z.  It looks very similar to the Google Search Engine page, and is navigated in much the same way too.

Type in a search term in the space provided.  You can check the selections for Articles, including Citations, and for Legal Documents.  Most often, you'll just want the Articles option selected. 

 

Click on the magnifying glass to search.

 

Much like in the Google Search Engine, your results show up in list format.  You want to look to the right of each result for the Find it @ Cedar Crest, which means that you will have access to the article.  To the left of the screen are options to narrow down your search results.

 

Click on Find It @ Cedar Crest next to the item that you want to see.

(You can also click on [PDF] or [HTML] to gain a full text version of the item, even if it does not say that it is located at Cedar Crest)

 

This page will be different depending on which database the article you selected is stored. 

 

In this case, this article is housed in EBSCOhost.  However, it will list the Resources Located for this Citation, choose one, and click on it to select.

 

This will take you to the article's abstract.  Again, this page will be different for each new article.  In this case, we have been directed to ScienceDirect.

Find the place on the page where it says Download PDF (in this case, the top middle portion of the page) and click on it.

 

By downloading the PDF, Adobe Reader will open so that you can see the full article.  From here, you can either read it on screen, save the PDF, or print the PDF file.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Advanced Search begins in much the same way that the Basic Search started, with the same beginning screen:

 

However, if you click on the arrow next to the search field, it will bring up an advanced search menu.

 

 

The rest of the search is the same as the Basic Search from this step on.