Biology

Google is the place to go for research, right? WRONG.

• Google actually limits you when you're researching. 
• Google is a search engine, and all it knows to do is pull together information that's freely available on the internet and put it on a search results page for you. The free resources Google can access are only a tiny part of the internet. 
• There are no experts behind the scenes picking the best resources. That means you get a mixture of Wikipedia entries, ads, Twitter links, Amazon product pages, and more all thrown together. 
• Many articles found on Google come at a cost - they ask you to pay $!

At the Weatherford College Library, our favorite tip for getting the most out of Google is to use this formula:

keywords + site:edu/gov 

Basically, just type your search terms and add "site:edu" OR "site:gov." This tells Google that you ONLY want to see websites that end with .edu or .gov. 

Google only gets you so far. Instead, Start your research using Search It All (find the link on the blue navigation bar at the top of the page.) Search It All searches almost all of our digital resources as well as our physical resources!

• Databases (About 200!) for peer-reviewed, newspaper, and magazine articles
• Ebooks
• Books
• Streaming videos

The Internet is made up of multiple layers. Google can only see the surface layer of the internet, which is a tiny portion of what is available. The vast majority of online information is in a layer called the deep web. Much of the deep web is made up of services you have to subscribe to such as Netflix or library databases.

The library subscribes to many scholarly databases that provide information you cannot get to with a Google search. Deep web information is important because it is often higher quality and more in-depth than the information Google can access. 

The Library Catalog Search It All is a simple and fast search engine that allows you to search simultaneously for books, articles, and more. 

The tool combines the article-level content of a large selection of our subscribed e-journals, databases, and library catalog in a single search interface.

Search It All can:

• save you time
• be a good starting point for interdisciplinary research
• help you to discover which specialized databases to use for further research
• display the most relevant results first, whether they are books, scholarly articles, media, or digital content
• help you to discover content that you won’t find if you only search a single database 

This sample search of "green tea" in the image below found over 18,700 books, articles, and videos.

• Use "Advanced Search" to add additional search options.
• The "Filter My Results" options on the left let you sort by type (books, videos, articles), location (library items), and date. 

When doing your search in Search It All, set these filters:

• Format = Will change depending on your assignment requirements (Books, Articles, Video)
• Content Type = if your assignment requires articles = "Full Text" (to see right away) and "Peer Reviewed" (if required)
• Publication Year = set depending on your assignment
• Language = English (if you see a lot of materials in languages you cannot understand)

If you are not finding enough resources, change these filters:

• Held By Library = "Libraries Worldwide" (you will need to do an Interlibrary Loan request for items not available from WC)
• Content Type - take "Full Text" off (you will need to do an Interlibrary Loan request for items not available from WC)
• Publication Year - take the date requirement off to see if the date is making resources unavailable

• Click "Databases" on the blue navigation bar above and search individual databases.
  • Set All Subjects to the appropriate subject for your search