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Library & Academic IT

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Academic IT

Thanatology (Death, Grief, Bereavement, End of Life) Research Guide: Google Scholar and Full Text

A research guide for thanatology courses

Setting up Google Scholar for off campus full text access

When on campus, Google Scholar recognizes the college’s IP address range and automatically authenticates for full text access to articles available in our databases.  To have similar access from off campus, it is easy to configure Google Scholar to access full text articles available through the library. Follow these steps:

1. Go to Google Scholar

2. Click on the 3 horizontal bars at the top left of the screen

3. Click on "settings" after the menu opens

4. Click on "library links" from the left hand menu

 

5. Search for “Brooklyn College Library” and tick the box next to “Brooklyn College Library- >Find full text at Brooklyn”

6. Click “save” to save your new setting to the Brooklyn College Library

7. Conduct your search in Google Scholar and now in the results list you have the option to click on “>Find fulltext at Brooklyn”

8. Click “>Find fulltext at Brooklyn” and authenticate with your Brooklyn College credentials to access the full text of the article.

Enrolled BC students:

Username:  Your CUNYFirst username

Password format: Your CUNYFirst password

Faculty and staff:

Use your BC email credentials.

Pros and Cons of Google Scholar

Pros:

  • Google Scholar combines the familiarity of Google with access to scholarly materials.  
  • Google Scholar offers both basic and advanced options. 
  • Google Scholar searches the internet for scholarly articles, abstracts and books, and excludes popular magazine, newspaper or internet articles.
  • Google Scholar can help to fill in incomplete citations and tracks how often an article has been cited.
  • Google Scholar allows you to search across multiple disciplines in one search.
  • Google Scholar will highlight those resources available through the Brooklyn College catalog and provides links to those open source articles available for free online.

      Cons:

  • Google Scholar does not have an easy way to sort articles in your results list (e.g. peer reviews, full text)
  • It is not possible to search within a specific discipline with Google Scholar.
  • The link may take searchers to purchase page. Brooklyn College students, staff, and faculty can request most articles we do not own for students via Interlibrary Loan (ILL) at no charge.
  • Google Scholar does not clearly specify what type of material (academic journal, magazine, newspaper etc.) is in the results list.
  • Not everything in Google Scholar is scholarly. Google Scholar searches academic websites (.edu) as well as journals and publisher websites. Search results can include PowerPoints, news announcements or unpublished materials as well as articles and books. 
  • While Google Scholar will note those articles available at Brooklyn College electronically, it does not display those articles available in print.