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Search skills: Google Scholar

Applying theoretical frameworks and methods to your research

 

 

Google Scholar is alternative to Summon for finding scholarly material from many sources at once. it is very useful for articles, less so for books. It includes scholarly material not indexed by the main Google search engine, such a selection of content from university repositories. Also unlike the main Google search, Scholar does not personalise results.

There are two ways of ensuring Scholar links to SIA databases:

  • follow a link such as the above from the library website or guides, or:
  • on the Scholar homepage, choose Settings from the top menu, and then Library links from the menu on the left. Enter Sotheby's in the search box that appears, and you should be given the option to tick and then save Sotheby's Institue of Art - New York/UK. Your choice should be saved until you clear your cookies.

If an article or other document is available, there will be a link on the right hand side of the screen.  In the example below, the link says online @ SIA, showing that in the instance the link is to SIA's subscriptions:

 

If there are no options at all on the right hand side of the screen, follow the small link below the result, which in the example above says All 5 versions.  One of these versions may have an option.

 

Citations in later works

Under each search result, you will see a link to later papers and other resources that have cited the resource in question. This can be useful for evaluating how influential a paper has been, and for following the subsequent scholarly debate.

 

Finding works by a particular author in Scholar

To search for works by a particular author in Google Scholar, first use the burger icon - highlighted below - to access advanced search:

 

                      

 

From advanced search, you can access a screen for searching by author:

It is usually best to give more than the author's family name.  Quote marks may be useful. You can add in keywords, a date range, and other options if you wish.

 

Once you have produced your search results, you will see the author's name in green below the title.  If the name is underlined then you can click on it to produce a list of their other publications.

Note that you can see the number of other publications that have cited a piece of work.