Library Orientation for Nursing

Google Scholar is a freely-available search engine that focuses on scholarly literature. Sometimes the full text is immediately available but sometimes payment is required for full-text access. Through its library, RUSH subscribes to thousands of journal publications. Follow these steps to link RUSH's library to Google Scholar.

Would you like to see fewer requests for payment when accessing an article through Google Scholar? Here are some steps to help with that!

Link Google Scholar to RUSH Library Holdings

1. Often, the documents found through Google Scholar are not freely available in full-text.  For easier (and free) access to these same documents through RUSH Library, link Google Scholar to RUSH Library holdings.
2. Go to the Google Scholar website (scholar.google.com).
3. You will need a Google account.  If you have one, log in; If you do not, you will need to create one.  Then apply the following changes to any computers you regularly use.
4. Click the three bars by the logo
5. Click Settings

6. Click Library Links

7. Enter “RUSH” into the search bar, and click the magnifying glass icon. Mark the checkbox next to “Library of RUSH University Medical Center."  Click "Save." That's it!

Go back to Google Scholar and re-enter your search terms.  On the next page, you will see "Get it @ RUSH" in the right column.  Clicking that brings you directly to the full text.  If you don't see "Get it @ RUSH" in the right column, you should see a double arrow at the end of the citation. Click it and then click the "Get It @ RUSH link." If access is not available through RUSH, you will be given the option to request the item through interlibrary loan (ILLiad).

Tips and tricks for searching in Google Scholar

Keep a phrase together

• put the phrase in quotes 
• example:  "diabetes mellitus"   returns only those articles that have that exact phrase.

Get a citation in APA, MLA, or other format

• click on the   "   sign (the double quotation mark) underneath the result.

Find similar articles

• click on either "Related articles" or "cited by" underneath the result.

Limit your results to a certain file type (i.e. you can limit results to those with full text by finding only those that have a PDF)

• after your keywords,  type    filetype:  (Note:  no space after the colon)
• example:    diabetes  filetype:PDF   returns only results that have a PDF associated with them

Eliminate search terms

• use the minus symbol before the word you want excluded   
• example:    diabetes -gestational returns results related to diabetes but eliminates those that mention the word "gestational."  Use this with caution, as sometimes this eliminates good results too.  For example, an article that talks about  Type I diabetes, Type II diabetes and gestational diabetes will NOT be returned;  it would be eliminated because it has the word "gestational" in it.

Export citations as an RIS file

• save the citations you want by clicking the star (first item on the left on the line under the citation).  This puts them into your library.  Items will stay in your library until you choose to delete them, so you can do many searches on different days and they will remain in your library.  When you are ready to export, go into My Library (upper right) and click the box that selects all.  Next click the icon for Export, then choose RefMan.  This creates a file in RIS format.  It will show up in your Downloads folder.

Proximity Searches

• For example:  (bacteria OR microbiome) AROUND(3) (cancer OR neoplasm)

Want to do an Advanced Search?  From the main Google Scholar search screen, click on More (the three bars on top of each other, to the left of the Google logo).