Searching for data and information on the Internet using a basic search engine such as Google or Yahoo often does not provide you with results from the wealth of information that can be found in libraries. As a student, you have access to any of the resources provided by the University Libraries; however, once you separate from the University, those resources become limited. Google provides a way to search for professional and scholarly information via its Google Scholar search.
Google Scholar indexes scholarly materials by publishers and libraries who have agreed to work with Google Scholar on this project. When you are searching Google Scholar, you are searching an index of journal articles, professional societies, websites of faculty, books, as well as peer-reviewed papers amongst other types of scholarly information. In order to see library materials in your search results, you must set your preferences in Google Scholar. To do that follow these steps:
- Point your browser to Google Scholar.
- To the right of the search box you will see an option for Scholar Preferences.
- Click on that and the following page appears:
- Under the option for Library links, search for your local library. (In this example, Penn State is used.)
- Once you find your library, check all of the boxes which appear to search those collections.
- Note: For databases provided by some libraries, you need to be affiliated with that library in some way. These resources will show up as gray and will not allow a check mark to be placed in the box. All free resources are available.
If you go back to the Google Scholar search screen and run a search for "geospatial intelligence," the following results will appear. Note--on these results you can choose between "All Articles" or "Recent Articles"--a good tool if you are looking for the most recent papers published on a particular topic. As you scroll through the searches, you will see there are links provided to pdf files, websites of academic institutions, and, if you have your library settings in place, you will also have links to holdings in whichever library you chose.
Since I had Penn State as my library setting, you will see highlighted in the image links where it will take you directly to that resource at the University Libraries. This resource is a great way to search the broader academic community to find out what is being published in different disciplines. One of the other advantages to searching for this type of information in Google Scholar is that it is also searching open source journals, many of which are not accessible through libraries. While it does serve a critical need in the realm of information searching, Google Scholar is in no way a replacement for searching in your local library or in Penn State's libraries collections.
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Use Google Scholar to find three articles on geospatial intelligence. Don't take the top three either; find ones you think are interesting and informative.