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Google Scholar Guide

Search tips, setting up access to our full text resources, and using GS as a "federated" search for some of our databases.

Google Scholar and the Library Databases

Not all materials listed in Google Scholar are freely available. Few books will be entirely online, for instance. In many cases, especially with journal articles, when you click on a title in your search results, you will only see an abstract of the article, and be asked to pay to see the entire article. However, Google Scholar also allows you to hook into our library subscriptions.

If you are on campus, Google Scholar recognizes your location and automatically shows you the link to the library materials.

If you are off campus, there are two ways of seeing links to library subscriptions:

  1. Use a link that goes through our database login: the Google Scholar search box on the Library Home page or SCSU Login to Google Scholar
  2. Setting Scholar Preferences

Full Text Library Set Up in Google Scholar

You can set Google Scholar to recognize which school you are from.

  1. Click on the menu option (3 bar icon) in the upper left to access Scholar Settings. You can also access this on any results page. (Note: previous versions of Google Scholar had this option in the upper right.)
       
  2. On this page you can set the default collection, if results open in a new window, and if you want to use a citation manager like Zotero or Endnote Web. To set library access, choose Library Links.
     
  3. Search for Southern Connecticut. The most important ones to add are 'Southern Connecticut State University--SCSU Journal Finder' and 'Southern Connecticut State University -- ViewIt@Southern'. Use both if they both show up, but either one will work alone. You can also search for and add other libraries if you have access to somewhere else.
  4. Click the Save button   at the top or bottom of the screen.
  5. Once you have the library links set and you do a search, you will see links to SCSU Journal Finder/ViewIt@Southern, which work like the Find Article @ SCSU links in our databases.

Be sure to check the main title link, which leads to the "official version", any other links, which often lead to freely accessible versions of the articles, AND the SCSU Journal Finder/ViewIt link, which will check if the article is accessible in our databases. 

Chrome Google Scholar Button

Zotero

If you use the Zotero Citation Manager with the browser plugins, you may get automatically "proxied" for access to library subscribed resources, like a publisher's website.

If you still can't access the article, be sure to try the SCSU Journal Finder/ViewIt@Southern links for additional options.