"Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature." ~ Google Scholar "About" page. Use in conjunction with library databases for the most thorough searching.
Google Scholar might NOT be the best choice when:
- Your topic is specific to one or two related subjects (hint: try a subject-specific database)
- You only want books or media we have here at Furman (hint: try the catalog)
- You have never searched a database or need help identifying what database would be good to use for you research topic (hint: ask a librarian)
Google Scholar might be a good choice when:
- Your topic is interdisciplinary and very specific.
- You are comfortable using advanced search in Google, but instead want to focus on scholarly resources.
- You want to finding citing references for an article (hint: learn more about citing references here)