Every day you are confronted with an overwhelming amount of information on the internet.

Google is currently the most popular search engine and has the largest database, with billions of web pages, other types of documents (e.g. PDF, Word, Excel and PowerPoint) and images. Because the internet and the Google database are so huge, your search will always produce results, but not all of them will be reliable or relevant to your search question. Scanning the information you find is a very time-consuming process.

In addition, the Internet is being flooded by AI-generated output due to the increasing popularity of GenAI tools such as ChatGPT. Much of this output is of low quality. This makes it increasingly difficult to search the Internet efficiently and to select reliable and relevant information from the large number of search results.

During your study you will be warned time and again by your teachers about the quality of the search results you find using Google (or another search engine). Always check your search results critically! In the chapter 'Evaluating the quality of internet sites' you will find more information enabling you to distinguish between reliable and unreliable websites. Below you will find some suggestions about how to search better and more efficiently. And an alternative for the 'standard' Google is presented.

Search engines such as Google only enable you to retrieve a very small part of all existing academic literature, because they do not have access to the databases that are used by libraries for library catalogues and bibliographies and to full-text publishers' databases.

However, you may sometimes come across relevant references using Google, for example on publishers’ websites or the personal web pages of academics. 

Although Google Scholar is much more useful for finding scholarly publications than the regular Google, you will get much better results by searching in the databases the Library offers.

Google Scholar is a search engine for searching in a growing collection of academic publications that cannot be found using the ‘standard’ Google search engine. Some publishers have given Google Scholar access to the full text of their online journals. You can also use Google Scholar to find citations (see the chapter Citation searches) and references to books.

Lean Library

Lean Library is a browser extension for off-campus library access.

How does it work?
If you visit a website the library has a license for, you will get a notification. Click to login and get access.

The browser extension displays its icon in your bookmarks bar. It works almost like a traffic light. If the icon is green, then you have access. If the material you’d like to use doesn’t seem accessible, Lean Library will automatically check for open access versions of the article.

The extension is not yet available for mobile devices

download Lean Library

You can also set Google Scholar to show which publications are available via the University of Groningen:

• Select ‘the first icon (top left)
• Select 'Settings'
• Select ‘Library links’
• Search for: university groningen
• Tick: University of Groningen Library – Get It! Univ of Groningen (un-tick other options)
   

You will now be able to see, via the Get it! link, whether a document is available through the RUG.

N.B. If you are working via the University network, these links are automatically selected.