Configuring Google Scholar for off-campus use
Note: If you're using Google Scholar from a library workstation or any other on-campus computer, the UIUC Discover full text links will display automatically without any special configuration.
Google Scholar is a handy tool for searching academic articles from a variety of sources across many disciplines. However, if you're using it from off-campus, you'll often get prompted to pay for the full text of articles. In many cases, these are articles that you can freely access as a UIUC affiliate through one of the library's many subscription databases or journals. Happily, you can use Google Scholar's Library Links feature to explicitly identify yourself as a UIUC affiliate. This allows you to discover full text library resources directly through Google Scholar results. Here's how:
- This is what Google Scholar search results look like when you're off-campus and haven't yet identified yourself as a UIUC affiliate:
- To identify yourself as a UIUC affiliate, click the Scholar Preferences link next to the search box. You should end up here:
- In the Library Links search box, type university of illinois urbana and click Find Library. This should result in a "University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Discover UIUC Full Text)" checkbox.
Make sure this box is checked and click Save Preferences. - Now, when you run searches in Google Scholar, you should see UIUC Discover links either alongside or below many of the results:
Upon clicking one of these links, the library's Discover service will attempt to find the full text of the article in the library's online collections. You'll see a screen like this:
Please note that, even if you don't see a Discover link next to an article, it doesn't mean that we don't have it! The UIUC Library has access to tens of thousands of journals online and in print, and not all of them are accessible through Discover. If you need help locating a particular article that you found through Google Scholar, please Ask a Librarian.
For instructions on how to move citations from Google Scholar into RefWorks, please see our Importing Citations into RefWorks page.
