Useful new Google features

Google has introduced some useful features to their search results page. After searching in Google you will notice a link to “Show options/Hide options” at the top of the page (seems to work on google.com but not yet google.com.au).

One of the options you will see on the left hand side includes the ability to  restrict your search results by date. For example, a search on early childhood education restricted to the last 24 hours brings up news items, conferences, events, jobs, recent postings to edna etc.

There are other options to restrict by types of material — forums and reviews. There is also the “wonderwheel” that gives you a visual representation of search results and related categories.

Google Scholar and library resources

Many within the School will know about Google Scholar for accessing scholarly resources. What is sometimes not realised is that when you access items via Google Scholar you are often doing so via the Library’s paid subscriptions. The publishers and other providers give access to their online resources via computers with RMIT’s IP address. This means that if you are searching Google Scholar on campus then you will often get immediate access to that journal article or other resource.

This is important to know because if you are off campus then you can authenticate as an RMIT user by accessing Google Scholar via Search it. Simply click on Search it and log on, go the Search it Databases tab and type in Google Scholar. Click on the Google Scholar entry and it will recognise you as an RMIT user and give you access to the paid subscriptions.

Academic study and the use of internet sites

I am running classes for Foundation Studies at the moment on the evaluation of internet sites. Students brainstorm criteria to use for evaluating the scholarly suitability of internet sites and then use that criteria to make judgements about several example sites.

Issues that have cropped up have included the use of sites like Wikipedia and YouTube; the different types of professional, commercial and educational websites; the use of portals that have already made evaluations of websites; the way dated information affects different subject areas.

The second half of the class then looks at advanced Google techniques: the advanced search page, using Google to search particular sites or domains, searching terms within the titles of pages etc.

I am happy to run such classes for any of the programs within the School. Given that students are going to use Google it makes sense that we emphasise the need to be critical and proficient in the way they use it.