Most college and graduate students have to write research papers. It comes with the territory. But in the past few years, my sense - based on both first person experience and shared stories from colleagues - is that students often start their research with Google. And stop there. If it's not indexed in Google it does not exist. When you're encouraging students to look at actual scholarship - as opposed to blogs, organziational PR, or other stuff - Google just won't do the trick. Yet students hew to Google as if any other research tool is utterly unworkable.
Here's my advice: send 'em to Google Scholar! It's research lite, to be sure, but at least it'll put your students in the right sandbox. And there's nothing to fear...a Google Scholar search feels every bit as safe as a Google search. With a name like Google, it has to be good!
Actually, thanks to HeinOnline, Google Scholar is becoming a more powerful legal research tool. HeinOnline partnered with Google this year, and Google has now indexed most of the contents of the HeinOnline Law Journal Library so that Google Scholar searches will include articles from the HeinOnline library. You can find out more about it here or talk to your school's law librarian: http://heinonline.blogspot.com/2008/03/heinonline-law-journals-are-being.html
Posted by: Amy | August 19, 2008 at 10:02 AM