Google Scholar is a search engine for scholarly information. It makes available information records that an author, university repository, or journal publisher have chosen to list. It is useful because it searches across many resources and returns many resource types, including journal articles and book chapters, though it is important to note that results are not always from academic-quality sources. Google Scholar will also return results to resources you do have access to via the Library, and those you do not.

Watch the video on the right to gain an overview of Google Scholar, including how to change your settings to show which resources are held in the Library's collection.

The Internet is a great place to locate background information and additional resources outside of scholarly publications. These resources, often referred to as grey literature, can include information about government departments, consumer issues, companies, statistics, latest news and more.

Because anyone can publish anything on the internet, there is a lot of information to sift through when searching the web and you can also end up with a lot of irrelevant and/or unreliable information.

However, there are some tips and tricks you can implement to make the most out of Google Search and improve the relevance and quality of your results. These strategies are slightly different to those offered in Primo Search and journal databases.

While Google Search does offer an Advanced Search, which you might like to use, you can use these strategies within the basic search box to provide you with the same control.