Tech Tools: LibKey Nomad, Google Scholar, RefWorks

Google Scholar is powerful & can be used to search for academic articles & books. Google Books can be used to see book previews. 

Google Scholar should automatically link to our library articles in our databases, in the right margin of your search!

If it doesn't do that, we recommend that you link Google Scholar to our library to see articles owned in our collection instantly. 
 

Directions for how to link Google Scholar to Regent Library:  

• Go to Google Scholar
• Open the three-bar or "hamburger" menu in the upper left 
• Click "Settings" in the drop-down menu
• Click the "Library Links" section
• Search for 'regent university'
• Select the 'Regent University - Viewit@regent.edu' option
• Click "Save" and you will be returned to the Google Scholar homepage
   

Then, when you are searching:

• Search for your key words (or titles or authors). Try different combinations.
• Note, Google automatically looks for synonyms & other spellings.
• When you find an article that's available in our collection, it will have 'Viewit@regent.edu' in the right margin, or a database link
• Click on that link and you will be directed to the Regent login page
• For books that come up, you will need to copy the title and come to Primo to see if we have them
   

Tips for Using Google Scholar (Special Operators)
 

• try enclosing words in quotation marks to get exact phrases like "first amendment"
• try synonyms and variations; use the word OR between them, like college OR university 
• use the minus symbol to exclude unrelated words, like Abraham -Lincoln (if you want Abraham from the Bible)
• use the word AROUND to indicate words should be near each other in the results, like Covid AROUND lockdown
• Use an asterisk star * to take the place of missing or unknown words in a phrase
• Search site: then your key words (no spaces) if looking for a website title.
• Search intext: then your key words if looking for it in the text of the website, not the title.
• You do not need to use AND or parentheses with Google
• Also, note that even if you don't use OR, it will treat the various terms as options--you can enter a lot of terms
• You don't need to use an asterisk at the end of a word to bring up different word endings as Google does that already
  
  Great Uses for Google: You can find background information or basic terminology on your topic through regular Google, as well as religious websites, free archives & e-books, newspaper & magazine articles, think tanks, open-access academic sources, and government sources. Remember to use discernment and that a lot of websites are biased, promotional, or non-credible.

It is recommended that you use RefWorks, a Regent-provided free account that stores your sources and forms bibliographies in your format. You can also export sources from Primo to RefWorks. Here are some other options: