"Google" and Other Internet Search Engines

The Internet is an incredible source of a wide variety of information, and there are some excellent search engines available to help us find this information. Google is one of the most popular and effective, yet professors don't seem to want you to use it. Where do these search engines fit into the research process?

Firstly, understand that there's a difference between websites and published scholarly articles. Websites can be anything, from a sales tool by a business to a personal blog or promotion of a cause. There is no standardization or review process. Anyone can publish a website at any time, with little trouble. Google was designed to find websites. Lots of websites provide valuable information. Very few websites provide access to scholarly research without a fee.

If you're looking for general information online, Google is a great place to start. See our webpage on Evaluating Websites for help with using websites.

Google can also find scholarly information, if you know how to use it well. But Google's ability to provide the scholarly articles you need for university research is limited.

To understand when to use Google, it's helpful to understand the relationship between scholarly publishing and the Internet.

Publishers, Online Journals, and Authentication

Scholarly publishing has existed in print for decades. It's easy to understand who has access to printed journals because a copy of each journal issue is delivered to your door - even if your door is a library door. It makes sense that to get them delivered, you must subscribe to them. Many of these subscriptions cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year.

When the Internet came along, some publishers realized that if they created an online version of their journals, people could access them over the Internet. There are advantages and disadvantages to this "digitization" of print materials. Although costs associated with physically delivering these journals to customers are saved, it is expensive to mount the documents on servers and maintain programs that provide access. And since large publishers still need to be reimbursed for the cost of producing journals, they need to charge for access. Authentication is used to ensure that only those who have paid for access get access. Subscriptions are still required, and when an institution subscribes to a journal, it provides a list of IP addresses of all the computers on campus. The providers ensure that only those computers can access the journals. This is why you need to use a proxy server for access to our online journals from home.

Most often, online publications are a duplication of what has been published in print. To publishers and the scholars who use the information, the Internet is simply the delivery method.

There are publishers and scholars who believe that regardless of the cost of publication, the information should be available free to anyone. These journals (and other publications) are often known as open-access and they're freely available online. Although there are many of these free journals, they are still rare among publishers. Becoming more popular is the idea that older volumes of the journal are freely available, but not recent ones. Newer issues are "embargoed" or unavailable without a subscription.

A few scholarly publications are only available online, and never appear in print. Sometimes these journals are not as widely accepted by scholars as true scholarly journals, but this is changing.

Keep in mind that any individual can publish on the Internet. These individuals may or may not be scholars. If an online article is not part of an official scholarly publication, you need to use your own judgement to decide if what they've published is legitimate and scholarly. See our webpage on Evaluating Websites for help with this.

The Library

Libraries select their subscriptions based on the needs of their institution and the recommendations of scholars in the field. You can be relatively safe in assuming that journals found in your academic library will contain the scholarly content you need for your research. Naturally, library budgets are limited, and the library tries to make the best selections possible with the funds available.

One of the decisions a library makes is the format in which to purchase subscriptions. Journals may come in print, online, or microform format. Sometimes groups of online journals are sold together in packages. Library decisions on purchases are based on content more than on format, and we continue to purchase some journals in print rather than online.

Internet Search Engines

Internet search engines find out what's available on the web by sending out "crawlers". Like little insects, they crawl all over the web looking for new information and websites. They gather what information they can about these sites and send the data back to their homebase. They don't have the ability to consider the information or to appraise its value. They only gather and send.

If access to a website is restricted, these crawlers can't get in to find out what's there. Since most scholarly sites have restricted access, these crawlers can only get in if they're given permission. Even if they get permission to have a peek inside and report back, they still can't grant you permission to access what they found. The authentication process prevents access to anyone who doesn't have a paid subscription.

Google Scholar

As a Google Scholar user, you can search the site, read the citations and click on the links to articles. If Trent has purchased access to the article, and the provider recognizes you as a valid Trent user, you will be able to access the article. If not, you will be denied access to the article.

Google Scholar does exactly what the library's indexes do: it provides citations to articles that it can find. It hopes to do what students keep asking us to - provide one place to search the entire world of scholarly publications. At the moment, it doesn't do that because not all publishers are included. Over time, the number of publishers will increase, and more information will be available, but access to its findings will continue to be restricted to paying customers.

We've arranged to have Trent University added as an institution on the Google Scholar site, so that you will be recognized by our providers, whether you are on campus or not. To activate it:

1. Go to Google Scholar.
2. Click on the gear graphic in the upper right corner to go to "Scholar Preferences".
3. In the "Library Links " box, enter "Trent University" and click on "Find Library ". It will find the Trent entry, and display it with a checkmark beside it.
4. While you're there, add links to RefWorks, so that you can download citations into your RefWorks account for later use.

The screen will look like this:

If you save your preferences, they will probably be there the next time you go to the site, but if not, just do the same again.

Now, when you search, your results will include links to Trent resources.

If you're off-campus, you'll be asked to login to identify yourself as a valid Trent user. When you search Google Scholar with the Library Links enabled, you can access any article our library has subscribed to. You will not, however, get free access to articles that our library does not already receive online.

Library Indexes and Databases

The Trent library already subscribes to several services that do what Google Scholar is doing. Our indexes provide citations to articles that may or may not be available online or within our library. Most of the time they provide links to the articles, through our service, and these links are proxied to allow off-campus access (authentication).

The Library's databases are listed on our Directory of Online Databases page. Some cover a certain topic, some a group of journals published by a particular publisher, and some have other, unique purposes. All our databases contain scholarly material that is appropriate for University-level research.

One Place to Search for Everything?

This just doesn't exist yet. Some services are working in that direction, but until all the various publishers can agree on where, how, and who to accomplish it, it won't happen. When it does happen, we might be so overwhelmed by the results we get that we don't know what to do with them.

Librarians refer to this idea as federated searching. It involves putting several databases together for use with one interface (search engine). You go to the interface, choose which databases you want to search, and put in your search terms. Do we love this idea? Yes, and no. When you put all the databases in one place, you lose the individuality of each database that makes it specific and powerful. For instance, the thesaurus search in PsycINFO only works in the PsycINFO database, and in Historical Abstracts you can search for articles about a certain time period. These features would be lost in a general search engine, where broad keyword searches are the norm. On the other hand, we realize that it simplifies the process for most researchers. It makes it easier to find broad subject matter but more difficult to be specific. It also requires more thought in sifting through the results and evaluating their use for your topic, since the results are more varied.

Scholars Portal Journals is a database run by all Ontario Universities that's moving toward this goal. It simultaneously searches millions of articles in thousands of scholarly journals from a variety of publishers. But not all publishers are willing to be part of this. Another product called a "Discovery Layer" is used in some libraries; it allows you to search all available resources at once.

For more information on federated searching, try a Google search on "federated searching", or go to The Truth About Federated Searching.

To Google or Not to Google?

There's no right or wrong answer to this question. Google is an excellent search engine and the web is full of useful information. What's important is your ability to distinguish appropriate sources from inappropriate sources, since the library isn't doing any sorting for you when you're on the web.

For help in evaluating the quality of a website, see our webpage on Evaluating Websites.

It's also important that you know how and when to put Google aside and use the scholarly indexes that our library pays hundreds of thousands of dollars for each year. This is where the majority of the best research material can be found, and if you graduate from University without knowing how to use them, you've done yourself a true injustice that will probably cost you down the road.

If you want help understanding these concepts, stop by the Information Desk in the library and ask us for help.

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Last Modified: March 14, 2012
Maintained by , Thomas J. Bata Library.