Google Scholar is a specialized search engine that allows you to search for academic, and scholarly materials such as books, journal articles, patents, and court cases.
Google Scholar searches very widely, not everything that you find will be available through the University of South Alabama Library.
To access Google Scholar with our University of South Alabama preferences set, go to Internet Search Engines on the Marx Library homepage and choose Google Scholar, or click here.
***Note: Preferences are important so that when you search, you will only receive articles that you can access through the Marx Library's databases. If you do not use Google Scholar with the Marx Library preferences set, you will get results that you cannot access.****
***Note: Google Scholar does not do an exhaustive or complete search of scholarly publications. Google Scholar does not index all available material. To conduct a complete search use our available databases.***
To manually set Google Scholar Preferences:
1. Go to https://libproxy.usouthal.edu/login?url=http://scholar.google.com/
2. Choose Scholar Preferences located to the right of the Search box
3. In the Library Links box, type University of South Alabama
4. You should get three choices: University of South Alabama (USA eText); Open WorldCat (Library Search); and University of South Alabama (Full Text@IngentaConnect)
5. Check the boxes in front of each one
6. Click Save Preferences
Google Scholar can be a great tool for finding information, however, it is not a replacement for using the library databases.
Advantages:
Disadvantages:
