Q. What is Google Scholar and should I use it?

Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources:

from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites.

(!) Keep in mind that anything you find in Google Scholar, you can also find in the TCC Library's Discovery Catalog Search (Sometimes, Google Scholar knows what you want better than Discovery, but Discovery has more options for granting access, such as through our databases or through interlibrary loan). You may run into paywalls using Google Scholar. 

If you run into paywalls for material you find on Google Scholar, try finding the same article, book, etc. in Discovery (pro tip: using quotation marks around the title can sometimes help the catalog or any search engine narrow it down, forcing it to search for the keywords as a phrase). Even if TCC Library doesn't have accesses, you can attempt to get the material through interlibrary loan using the blue button in a result. The library gives you more access than Google Scholar can! 

Using Google Scholar and TCC resources together is a great way to get your research done. Google Scholar is a great finding aid, and Discovery is a great access aid. 

See the video and links below for more information on Google Scholar.