Google Search Tools Students Often Overlook

The default action for students to take when given a research task is to turn to Google. Unfortunately, many students won't venture much beyond the first couple of pages of Google.com results pages before declaring, "I can't find anything about this." But as Dan Russell reminds us in The Joy of Search, good search often requires the use of multiple tools. To that end, Google offers search tools beyond just Google.com. Unfortunately, students won't use those tools unless they know that those tools exist and how to use them. Here are some of the Google search tools that students often overlook. 

Google Books helps students locate and search inside books without having to track down a physical copy of each book that they are interested in reading. If students do want a physical copy of a book, Google Books can help them find a local library that has a copy of the book they desire. Those features of Google Books and more are demonstrated in my new video Five Things Students Should Know About Google Books. 

Google Dataset Search is a search tool that is designed to help users locate publicly available datasets. This isn't a tool for searching within the datasets, it's a tool for finding datasets. For example, if you're doing research on earthquakes and want to find some datasets to analyze, Google Dataset Search will help you locate datasets that you could then open and or download to analyze. Watch the following short video to see how to use Google Dataset Search. 

Google Scholar is probably best known as a search tool for locating peer-reviewed, academic papers. It can also be used to locate patent filings and to locate court cases. Those features and more are demonstrated in the following tutorials.

• Five Google Scholar Features Students Should Know How to Use

• How to Use Google Scholar to Learn About Inventions and Inventors

• How to Use Google Scholar to Find Federal and State Court Rulings