Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-sh8wx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-21T04:11:52.390Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Where Google Scholar stands on art: an evaluation of content coverage in online databases

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2016

Hannah Noll Rozear
Hannah Noll Rozear*
Affiliation:
Duke University, 104 Chapel Drive, Durham, NC 27708, USA
*
Email: hannah.rozear@duke.edu
Get access

Abstract

This study evaluates the content coverage of Google Scholar, as it compares to three bibliographic databases – Arts & humanities citation index, Bibliography of the history of art and Art full text/Art index retrospective – on the subject of art history. The comparison reveals that it indexes roughly one-third of the 470 tested articles, dwarfed by the Arts & humanities citation index’s 73% coverage. Additionally, 64% of the 157 articles retrieved in Google Scholar are ‘citation-only’ records that contain incomplete bibliographic data and lack direct links to the abstracts or full text of the articles.

Type
Research Article
Information
Art Libraries Journal , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , 2009 , pp. 21 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © The Art Libraries Society 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. The ‘Stand on the shoulders of giants’ slogan originates from Bernard of Chartres’ use of the metaphor, ‘We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants...’ in the 12th century (Concise Oxford dictionary of quotations), but Google Scholar credits Isaac Newton’s version, ‘If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants’, as the inspiration for its slogan (http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/help.html).Google Scholar
2. Jacsó, Péter, ’As we may search - comparison of major features of the Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar citation-based and citationenhanced databases,’ Current science 89, no. 9 (2005): 1537–1547.Google Scholar
3. Google Scholar, ‘About Google Scholar,’ http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/about.html.Google Scholar
4. Callicott, Burton and Vaughan, Debbie, ‘Google Scholar vs. library scholar: testing the performance of Schoogle,’ Internet reference services quarterly 10, no. 3/4 (2005): 71–88.Google Scholar
5. Gardner, Susan and Eng, Susanna, ’Gaga over Google? Scholar in the social sciences,’ Library hitech news 22, no. 8 (2005): 42–45.Google Scholar
6. Jacsó, Péter, ‘Content evaluation of databases,’ Annual review of information science and technology (ARIST) 32 (1997): 231–267.Google Scholar
7. Tenopir, Carol, ‘Evaluation of database coverage: a comparison of two methodologies,’ Online review 6, no. 5 (October 1982): 424.Google Scholar
8. Sorensen, Lee, ed., Dictionary of art historians, http://www.dictionaryofarthistorians.org/.Google Scholar
9. Shultz, Mary, ‘Comparing test searches in PubMed and Google Scholar,’ Journal of the Medical Library Association 95, no. 4 (2007): 442–453.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
10. Walters, William H., ‘Google Scholar coverage of a multidisciplinary field,’ Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 43 (2006): 1121–1122.Google Scholar
11. Google Scholar, ‘Understanding a search result,’ http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/help.html.Google Scholar
12. Google Scholar, ‘About Google Scholar,’ http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/about.html.Google Scholar