Free, Open, and Public Domain Resources: Google Scholar

Google Scholar's Advanced Search feature allows you to fine-tune your search by publication date, language, and broad subject area. You can also use the regular Google tricks:

• "" around phrases
  
• * at the end of words to get related words with different endings
• - in front of words or phrases you don't want
• + in front of words or phrases you do want.
  

For example, +"new york" -subway +train* railroad

Another thing Google Scholar can be used for is to see who cited a particular article. Generally, people who cite an article are working on a closely related topic, so this helps you track down more materials for your research.

Google Scholar allows you to search scholarly articles that are available online. These works are almost always protected by copyright, but you can link to them and people can access them for free.

By logging into Google Scholar through the library's proxy server (as the link above directs you to do) your search results show a link to the full-text in our Online Library, when that is available. Even if an article is not available in our Online Library, you may find full-text for free online. Many scholarly writers make an agreement with their publisher so that their work is published in a peer reviewed journal but a draft or version of it is also placed online for free public access.

The huge advantage of using Google Scholar is that it searches across the content of many databases, journals, and libraries.