Skip to Main Content
 

Introduction to Research

How to turn your topic into a search, search through library resources and the web, evaluate what you found, improve your writing and citation, and get help from a librarian.

Can I Google That?

Using Google to Find Credible Sources

Yes! You can Google that! There are several ways to find credible sources on google.

Google Scholar is a great way to find scholarly, academic sources. You can also use the "site:" tool to limit your Google search results to government or academic sources. Keep scrolling for information on how to use these tools

Google Scholar at Home

To connect our collection to Google Scholar:

  1. Click the three line menu at the top left of the page.
  2. Select "Settings."
  3. Click "Library links."
  4. In the search box, search for "University of Memphis - Check for full text."
  5. Check the box and click the "Save" button.

Now, results in our collection will show up to the right of the search results. You can also connect Google Scholar using the LibKey Nomad extension.

Library links page in Google Scholar settings with checkbox "University of Memphis - Check for full text" selected.

If you need to search courts & cases, under the search bar on the homepage, select Case Law, and select which courts you want to search.

 

Site Search

Use site: in Google to narrow your results. Get you what you need faster.

Use site:.gov to find only websites ending in .gov. Like this:

null

 

You can also use site: to search within websites. Find the base URL of a site (commercialappeal.com, for example). In Google, type your keywords, then use site:commercialappeal.com. Google will only search within The Commercial Appeal. This can be done with any website, not just newspapers.

For more tips and tricks using Google, Google Scholar, and Wikipedia, work through the tutorial below!