Tag Archives: HowTo

Google…Scholar?

If you’re just Googling everything, you might often find yourself unable to get access to some very useful articles. You could go to our eJournals page and look up the journal title and click through that way…or, you could stop using Google and start using Google Scholar.

Google Scholar works a lot like Google, but instead of indexing the whole web, it’s full of scholarly articles.  From their website blurb:

Google Scholar covers peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts, and other scholarly literature from all broad areas of research. You’ll find works from a wide variety of academic publishers and professional societies, as well as scholarly articles available across the web. Google Scholar may also include multiple versions of an article, possibly preliminary, which you may be able to access.

Sounds good?

Behind the scenes, we’re letting Google Scholar have a look at our electronic holdings, so that you don’t have to keep checking back with the OU eJournals homepage. There’ll be links for full text right there in your search results, for everything that we’re subscribed to.

And, if you’re working off-campus, clicking through will let you sign in with your SSO to authenticate. All in one easy step…

How to…

Visit: scholar.google.com

First of all, you’ll need to set your ‘Scholar Preferences’…

 

Click here for preferences
Click here for preferences
 
Once you’ve clicked through, you can set a number of searching and results display options, but the most important thing to do is to set up the “Library Links”.
 

 

Set up Library Links here
Set up Library Links here
 
All you need to do is search for Oxford and then check the box next to “Oxford University – Oxford Full Text“.
 
Save your Scholar Preferences at the bottom of the page and that’s it!
 
Now when you search in Google Scholar, you’ll be able to get straight through to anything you’re entitled to access as part of the university. Look for links like this:
 
Click for full text
Click for full text

Clicking on these full text links will give you the familiar OU eJournals pop-up window, so you can see where you are entitled to access full text from. Remember there might be more than one location and you should check the date ranges associated with each one…

If you’re off-campus, any click to full text from the OU eJournals window will prompt you for your SSO login details, so we know you’re a university member and let you access what you’re entitled to.
Hurray!

Making the most of your Google search

Have you tried Google’s Advanced Search yet?  Adding a few search commands to your query helps you find the information you want by making your search more specific.  The advanced search helps you do this, and here are a few tips and tricks you can use in the ordinary search:

Colour code: command, example, explanation

oxford eresources use quotes to find a phrase rather than separate words

intitle:sciencedirect safari find pages with these words in the title

inurl:ouls libraries find URL with this word also useful for dates e.g. inurl:2009

link:oxforderesources.wordpress.com to find pages linking to this site

site:ouls.ox.ac.uk restrict results to the OULS site

labour OR liberal finds either word

labour AND liberal finds both words

related:ouls.ox.ac.uk to find similar or related pages

filetype:pdf to find a particular filetype (try also doc and ppt)

+ the script Common words such as and, how, the are usually ignored in searches . use the ‘+’ symbol if a common word is essential to your search

~pavement synonym search (this example also finds asphalt)

define:PWN find a definition. Yes, you could use a dictionary (online or otherwise), but this will be more helpful for jargon, abbreviations and new words (examples: Web 2.0, OpenURL, GWOT, crackberry).

time:oxford find the time anywhere in the world

weather:oxford will I need an umbrella today?

sqrt 9 use your browser as a calculator.  More instructions

1 GBP in EUR use Google’s inbuilt currency converter List of currency codes

Try combining some of these commands, for example: filetype:pdf AND site:ouls.ox.ac.uk

What is an RSS feed?

RSS icon
RSS icon

You can get updates from this blog by RSS: you can tell this because of the RSS icon in the address bar and there is also a link further down the main page.

There are so many information sources to keep up with on the internet.  Before RSS, you would have to visit each page individually to see if there was any new content.  RSS works the other way round: you log in to your RSS reader and all the new stories are brought to you.  You just tell your RSS reader the sites you’re interested in.

If you add the E-Resources blog to your RSS reader, you’ll be automatically updated on all the news we post.

There is a useful introduction to RSS on the BBC site.

Many RSS readers are free.  Some examples are Google Reader, Bloglines, Pageflakes and Netvibes.  Here is an even longer list!

What is a screenshot and how do I make one?

A screenshot, screen capture, or screen dump is an picture of a computer screen and the information it is displaying.

How to make a screenshot: Press PrtScrn/SysRq.

Nothing will appear to have happened, but your computer just took a snapshot of its screen and stored that picture on its clipboard.

You can then paste this image into an email or document by pressing Ctrl+V or right-clicking and choosing Paste.

Further instructions for Windows, Mac and more can be found at take-a-screenshot.org