History 430: Seminar in U.S. History (Quinney)

Google Scholar focuses on articles and conference papers to eliminate a lot of popular press articles. The goal is good, but results will include items that are not scholarly such as editorials, so be a critical consumer.

You will also see links to books and generally those will not lead anywhere. Check our catalog for the book's title and if we do not have it, you can request through Interlibrary Loan's Digitization on Demand service. 

Most of the results will connect to fee-based collections and ask you to pay to access. Never pay for this material as we either hold it in our database collections, have the book in our catalog! There is a work around to many of these pay-to-access requests. You need to identify yourself as a CSUSM student to get through any paywall. 

Before searching Google Scholar, set your GS user preferences to enable the CSUSM Library GET IT link [click here for a video in a pop up window]. If you do not set up Scholar, you will not be able to access the full text unless you pay, but if CSUSM owns the item, why should you pay for it?

Watch the video for tips and tricks comparing Google to Google Scholar and how easy it is to access full text with preferences enabled.