Expert Searching – Google and Google Scholar

Google search tips:

This is one of the best search tips pages ever!

And something most people have forgotten: Google has an Advanced Search.

 

Here are some pages from Google on search tips:

• This page explains search operators
• This page gives you general information
• This page explains wildcard searching in Google
• This page explains quotation marks, forced inclusion, stop words (words that Google ignores) and the OR operator 
• This page is a great summary of a range of advanced techniques

Note that the NOT operator (exclusion of a word) is rendered as a minus sign that is butted up to the word you want to exclude. Do not use the word NOT, even as capitals, as Goggle treats it as a stop word (i.e. a word it ignores). The NOT operator is very handy if you are searching for inquiry learning but want to exclude science e.g.: “inquiry learning” -science is treated as “inquiry learning” NOT science.

Learn more from the video below:

 

Google Scholar search tips:

Google Scholar searches a database of scholarly information such as journal articles, books and conference papers. It is a citation database, that means that it also shows you who cites the sources in their reference list. This is very handy to track the evolution of ideas and it allows you to browse other relevant sources. More information on searching Google Scholar is here.

NB: Please set up Google Scholar to search the QUT Library databases. This will allow you to access the full text of the sources using your QUT authentication. On this video I show you how to set up this function, and I do a very brief search in order to demonstrate how Google Scholar works.