Using Google Scholar

Google Scholar. Finally, something I am familiar with! Well, somewhat familiar. Again, I learned some incredible research tricks that I can put to excellent use in future research work.

·       Search phrase: Influenza epidemic of 1918-1919

·       I added the words in the U.S. to limit my results.

·       I did not use any other limiters.

·       This search brought far more articles than I have been able to get through the databases I have previously searched. However, not all these articles are directly related to what I am looking for. If I am not careful, I could suffer from information overload. There is NO WAY I will look through 12,300 results! I did get an interesting book reference that I will see if our library carries, though.

·       Because I have been using Google Scholar for my class research assignments over the past two years, I found this method to be much easier than navigating the library databases. This is only because of familiarity, though. The more I practice using the library resources, the easier they will be to use. Also, the library offers topic specific databases which can narrow the results list to something far more manageable and for the most part, related to what I am specifically looking for. Too many options could make me uncertain about my topic again. At this point in the research process, I probably want to be focused on the question I already selected for a project and not be tempted to start over with some new idea that catches my fancy.

·       One feature I was not aware of was the “Cited” link at the bottom of each result. I really would have loved using this feature for past research. It is definitely a tool I will use in the future.

Comments

  1. SamNovember 9, 2020 at 10:31 AM

    Hello, nice work on this. I'm glad you're familiar with Google Scholar already. I find that it works best with very specific or distinctive search terms, so it might be worth trying terms related to some narrower aspect of the flu epidemic (especially if it is related to a place or a person's name). --Sam

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