A *NEW* SEARCH ENGINE THAT LOCATES FREE TEXTBOOKS IN
(Created by Stephen Perry)
Picryl: The World's Largest Public Domain Media Search Engine
The World's Largest Public Domain Media Search Engine
THE "BIG FIVE" OF OER SEARCH ENGINES:
Just as South Africa has its "Big Five", so I personally believe that (currently) OER has its own "BIG FIVE"
of the best, most effective search engines.
They are (in no particular order:)
(For Example, Openly Accessible Books on ESL WRITING may be found here through the OER COMMONS)
("Search for Openly Available Content")
MERLOT: THE BEST OF THE BEST
GOOGLE ADVANCED (NOT GOOGLE, BUT GOOGLE ADVANCED) --
HOWEVER, FOR MAXIMUM EFFICIENCY, DO ENSURE THAT IN THE SITE OR DOMAIN FIELD OF GOOGLE ADVANCED, .edu must be noted in order to limit / refine the search to educational institutions; one can also in GOOGLE ADVANCED, limit the search to Powerpoints, .pdfs, Word Documents, Excel Documents, etc.
GOOGLE SCHOLAR:
(Please note problems/issues with GOOGLE SCHOLAR in this essay and in this one and this one)
(THIS IS A PERSONAL OPINION BASED ON MY YEARS OF EXPERIENCE USING GOOGLE SCHOLAR: My own problem with Google Scholar is that many times it will retrieve relevant citations, but often only provides the Abstract of the citation, rather than the complete Full Text.)
To be absolutely fair, many Librarians assert that GOOGLE SCHOLAR can be a useful and effective tool to locate relevant Open Access material, as long as effective search strategies are employed.
One such opinion, arguing for Google Scholar, comes from this website:
"Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic, Scopus, Dimensions, Web of Science, and OpenCitations' COCI: a multidisciplinary comparison of coverage via citations
New sources of citation data have recently become available, such as Microsoft Academic, Dimensions, and the OpenCitations Index of CrossRef open DOI-to-DOI citations (COCI). Although these have been compared to the Web of Science (WoS), Scopus, or Google Scholar, there is no systematic evidence of their differences across subject categories.
In response, this paper investigates 3,073,351 citations found by these six data sources to 2,515 English-language highly-cited documents published in 2006 from 252 subject categories, expanding and updating the largest previous study.
Google Scholar found 88% of all citations, many of which were not found by the other sources, and nearly all citations found by the remaining sources (89%-94%).
A similar pattern held within most subject categories. Microsoft Academic is the second largest overall (60% of all citations), including 82% of Scopus citations and 86% of Web of Science citations.
In most categories, Microsoft Academic found more citations than Scopus and WoS (182 and 223 subject categories, respectively), but had coverage gaps in some areas, such as Physics and some Humanities categories.
After Scopus, Dimensions is fourth largest (54% of all citations), including 84% of Scopus citations and 88% of WoS citations. It found more citations than Scopus in 36 categories, more than WoS in 185, and displays some coverage gaps, especially in the Humanities.
Following WoS, COCI is the smallest, with 28% of all citations. Google Scholar is still the most comprehensive source. In many subject categories Microsoft Academic and Dimensions are good alternatives to Scopus and WoS in terms of coverage."
Using Google Scholar; "Discover useful features of Google Scholar to help you find exactly what you're looking for."
---- another useful guide to searching Google Scholar from a Library Research Guide for Physics: Searching Google Scholar
(from the FreeTech4Teachers website, published on July 31, 2021)
(from the FreeTech4Teachers website, published on August 5, 2021)
--- A Google Scholar Trick: Search within citing articles in Google Scholar (from Musingsabout Librarianship.blogspot.com, 2021 October)
(This Blog post comes courtesy of Aaron Tay -- currently Library Analytics Manager, Singapore Management University. His experience also includes E-services Facilitator, Senior Librarian at the National University of Singapore Libraries. My thanks to Mr. Tay)
(MY PERSONAL OPINION on GOOGLE SCHOLAR IS BASED ON MY YEARS OF EXPERIENCE ACTUALLY USING GOOGLE SCHOLAR:
My own issue with Google Scholar is that many times it will retrieve very useful citations, but in many instances only provides the Abstract of the citation, rather than the complete Full Text.
NOTE:
The Internet Archive Scholar --noted below-- does provide full-text content. It bears repeating that opinions stated about Google Scholar are my own.)
BREAKING NEWS: The new Internet Archive Scholar is a new Search Engine -- I firmly believe it could eventually rival Google Scholar.
The Internet Archive Scholar "is a new project from the Internet Archive. It is focused on providing access to academic articles and journals from the 18th Century through today. The Internet Archive Scholar is very new. It's so new that it's labeled as being "in alpha" and when you visit, there is a message warning you that there may be several bugs and that it has not been officially announced."
PERSONAL MESSAGE: This new search engine will be a contender; I have used it extensively now, and find it to be excellent. See my formulas below for effective searching of this new search engine.
A Review of The Internet Archive Scholar in College and Research Libraries News (6/2021) - may be found here
About the Internet Archive Scholar: How It Works
Content in this search index comes from preservation copies at the Internet Archive in one of three forms:
- public web content
- digitized print material from paper and microform collections purchased and scanned by Internet Archive or our partners
- general materials on the archive.org collections, including content from partner organizations, uploads from the general public, and mirrors of other projects.
For those who may want to learn more, an article on the Internet Archive Scholar may be found here
About the Internet Archive Scholar: How It Works
Content in this search index comes from preservation copies at the Internet Archive in one of three forms:
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public web content
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digitized print material from paper and microform collections purchased and scanned by Internet Archive or our partners
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general materials on the archive.org collections, including content from partner organizations, uploads from the general public, and mirrors of other projects
An article about the Internet Archive Scholar may be found here
FORMULA for a specific search on the topic of Institutional Repositories in the Internet Archive Scholar:
"title" Institutional Repositories year:>2015
this performs a title search for the concept of Institutional Repositories for materials published after 2015 --
Another example: "title" PAUL ROBESON type: article-journal year:>1965 (this searches for Journal articles about the Singer and Civil Rights Activist, Paul Robeson, after the year 1965)
Feel free to use this basic formula for other searches you may wish to try in this free, open access database
YET ANOTHER EXAMPLE FOR THE INTERNET ARCHIVE SCHOLAR:
"title" CHINATOWN type: article-journal year:>1973 and Film (this formula retrieves articles on the 1974 Movie CHINATOWN, starring Jack Nicholson as a detective who thinks he has seen everything, and Faye Dunaway, harboring a lurid, truly sordid secret that animates the film's plot.)
AN ADDITIONAL SEARCH EXAMPLE:
To locate articles on OER in the INTERNET ARCHIVE SCHOLAR :
"title" OER type: article-journal year:>2019
(for journal articles on the topic of OER written after 2019)
OER = Open Educational Resources
OA= OPEN ACCESS
NEW!
A NEW CUSTOMIZED SEARCH ENGINE FOR LOCATING OPEN ACCESS ARTICLES AND PUBLICATIONS IN A VARIETY OF FIELDS
EX: SEARCH "REINFORCED CONCRETE AND ASCE" without the Quotes
or, try this search: LIBERIA CIVIL WAR THESIS
THIS NEW SEARCH ENGINE AVAILABLE HERE
NEW!
"Harvard Dataverse is a free cross-disciplinary repository open to all researchers from any discipline, both inside and outside of the Harvard community where you can share, archive, cite, access, and explore research data."
(TRY SEARCHING THE TOPIC OF "HUMAN TRAFFICKING" WITHOUT THE QUOTES IN THIS NEW DATABASE)
NEW!
NEW!
CORNELL UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL: "GET THE LAW" WITH EMBEDDED SEARCH ENGINE
https://www.law.cornell.edu/lii/get_the_law
NEW!
A NEW LEGAL SEARCH ENGINE: LAW REVIEW COMMONS
"Over 300 open-access law reviews · Over 220,000 articles · Free current issues & archives from 1852."
"Open Access Increases Visibility: Publishing open access increases the visibility of legal scholarship, makes scholars’ work more discoverable, and may also lead to more citations."
THE DIGITAL COMMONS NETWORK IS AN EXCELLENT STRATEGY FOR BROWSING CURRENT OPEN ACCESS ARTICLES IN A SPECIFIC ACADEMIC FIELD OR IN AN AREA OF INQUIRY, along with other Open Access Databases
NEW!
Get The Research: Open Access Research Search Engine/Tool for General Public
Get The Research is an Open Access Research Search Engine/Tool designed for the general public to make it easier to find, read and understand 20 million+ peer-reviewed Open Access scholarly research articles on any topic.
Get The Research uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques and Wikipedia to annotate and summarize the content and context of scholarly research articles/materials found in the Unpaywall Database (currently 20M+ scholarly articles harvested from 50,000+ publishers and repositories). https://www.gettheresearch.org/
NEW!
The very latest in the new Generation Search Engines; this one, created by George Mason University in Virginia, focuses on free Open Access and free Open Educational Resources (OERs) Using this Search Engine, one can locate free academic Textbooks, Lesson Plans, Curricular Materials, Open Courses, including Lectures, Lecture Notes, Videos of Lectures, etc.
A very powerful and unique Search Engine. George Mason has hit it out of the Ball Park with this Search Engine.
The Acronym for this Search Engine is MOM -- and as we always say in the Profession, LOVE YOUR MOM!
Example of a Search in MOM:
In the Full Record section of this Search Engine, type ESL LESSON PLANS (as one example, only) for free Open Access materials on Lesson Plans. This type of search will save teachers and students a great deal of time!
POWERPOINT INSTRUCTIONS FOR USING "MOM:"
I devised a simple POWERPOINT Tutorial on how to USE "MOM" WISELY: THIS IS A POWERFUL NEW SEARCH ENGINE THAT SEARCHES OER CONTENT ("MOM" = THE GEORGE MASON OER META-FINDER)
SCIENCE SEARCH ENGINE: "MOM" for SCIENCE (GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY) may be found here: http://bit.ly/MOMSCI
NEW!
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From the ABOUT page of this website:
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"Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS) is a search tool that aims to make the discovery of open content easier.
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OASIS currently searches open content from 117 different sources and contains 388,753 records, as of August 1, 2021.
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OASIS is being developed at SUNY Geneseo's Milne Library.
TYPE the SUBJECT or TOPIC you are looking for with the word THESIS to locate Theses or Dissertations
EXAMPLES:
HOXHA AND ALBANIA AND THESIS
OR:
ANGOLA AND COLD WAR AND THESIS
OR:
arkansas.edu and thesis and English
OR:
arkansas.edu and thesis and agriculture
(substitute the name of any particular University (rather than the University of Arkansas, as in our previous example) : e.g.. Wisconsin.edu and thesis and Geology)
NEW!
A NEW IMAGE SEARCH ENGINE -- THE CREATIVE COMMONS SEARCH TOOL --
SEARCHES CREATIVE COMMONS COLLECTIONS.
"Today CC Search comes out of beta, with over 300 million images indexed from multiple collections, a major redesign, and faster, more relevant search. It’s the result of a huge amount of work from the engineering team at Creative Commons and our community of volunteer developers.
CREATIVE COMMONS Search actively searches images across 19 collections pulled from open APIs and the Common Crawldataset, including cultural works from museums (the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art), graphic designs and art works, photos from Flickr, and an initial set of CC0 3D designs.
AN OVERVIEW OF THE NEW CREATIVE COMMONS SEARCH TOOL
How to Find Creative Commons Materials Using the Creative Commons Search Portal
How to Find Creative Commons Materials Guide.docx
Example
You are running a class project on river systems. The students are required to create a video on a river system of their choosing. In order to assist the students with this task, you are preparing a course pack that includes sample images for the students to use.
You want to conduct a search for CC images to include in the course pack. To do this you need to:
Example of a Search on Rivers.docx
The above Word .Doc details the steps involved in this example of a class project on river systems as noted above.
|
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Your search returns a number of photos that are exactly the kind of images you were looking for. You insert them into your course pack, along with the appropriate attribution details.
|
This project/resource was funded by the Alberta Open Educational Resources (ABOER) Initiative, which is made possible through an investment from the Alberta government
An amazing Search Engine that will give you FREE, Full-text access to the scholarship and publications researched and then published by Harvard Faculty, Harvard Librarians, and Harvard Graduate Students.
A very powerful and truly amazing customized Search Engine; from Harvard University. This is one of my absolute favorites to use and a very powerful example of the new generation of customized Search Engines. Please do use this!
Covers all topics and is updated almost continuously!
The Digital Commons Network brings together "free, full-text scholarly articles from hundreds of universities and colleges worldwide.The Network includes a growing collection of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, working papers, conference proceedings, and other original scholarly work." A little-know, but very powerful Search Engine. All Scholars and Researchers should be very familiar with this new Search Engine.
A NEW EDUCATIONAL DOCUMENTARY and EDUCATIONAL VIDEO SEARCH ENGINE:
ELDIS: Sharing the best in global development research for policy and practice.
Use the built-in search engine to locate full-text publications and documents on development issues all over the world. Also indexes the work of NGOs around the world. This is a little - known Search Engine, but it is powerful and will locate amazing resources.
Topics include Poverty, Climate Change, Agriculture, Corruption, Girls and Women, Empowerment, HIV/AIDS, Ebola, Diseases in general, and thousands more. An amazing Search Engine!
Again, a very powerful search engine for locating full-text documents.
You can also use the Search Engine to focus on a particular country such as Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, Central Asian countries, etc.
Just a fantastic search engine, and little known, but so powerful!
USAID OFFICERS ESPECIALLY LOVE THIS SECRET SEARCH ENGINE!
GOOGLE ADVANCED: Be sure to use GOOGLE ADVANCED SEARCH ENGINE --
and, once you have selected in the Google Advanced search engine, please select the following in your drop-down menu:
under Language, please select English from the drop--down menu;
in the site or domain field, please type .edu to limit your search results to educational institutions, such as Universities, for more reliable search results,
under region -- select United States from the drop-down menu,
and in the last update field, you can choose to opt for the past year to retrieve the very latest search results
and under the file type field, please select any format from the drop-down menu
-- any format will retrieve PPTs, .pdf files, Adobe Acrobat; word documents (.doc or .docx) and Excel spreadsheets
Google Advanced is truly a very powerful search engine; and in the opinion of this author, provides far more reliable results than using just Google.
Here is a PPT (POWERPOINT) that demonstrates some of the powerful features of GOOGLE ADVANCED SEARCH:
GOOGLE ADVANCED SEARCH HOW TO USE.pptx
LESSON PLANS: A NEW LESSON PLANS SEARCH ENGINE:
http://bit.ly/2OgVGK9
A NEW SEARCH ENGINE FOR LOCATING OPEN ACCESS COURSES FROM A VARIETY OF UNIVERSITIES: http://bit.ly/2OYzvZo
Covers U.S. Law and International Law
LIBRARY and INFORMATION SCIENCE:
A NEW SEARCH ENGINE FOR LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE
(Search ILS and ADVANCED in the provided Search Engine to locate articles discussing the latest advances in Integrated Library Systems currently used in Libraries, especially in Academic and Specialized Libraries)
A little-known search engine, but very powerful, and one of my favorites.
Try the Search: GOLD COAST AND PORTUGUESE to locate amazing full-text publications and documents, even dissertations! All Historians and Social Science Researchers should know about and use this amazing and very powerful Search Engine! It is truly unfortunate that this Search Engine is so little known. Also try the Advanced Search, which again is very powerful.
https://www.ssrn.com/index.cfm/en/
SSRN Year In Review 2021-- discusses new research networks, including Disability Inclusion Research, Racial and Social Inequity and Coronavirus related research, among many others.
(includes a separate video on How to submit Research to SSRN)
(THIS IS AN INCREDIBLE SEARCH ENGINE: This Search Engine now covers over 1200 Think Tanks and Research Centers
not just in the U.S., but also worldwide. From the Harvard University Libraries Website:
"Think Tank Search searches the websites of institutions that generate public policy research, analysis, and activity. These sites are affiliated with universities, governments, advocacy groups, foundations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs,) and businesses. Inclusion is based upon the relevancy of subject area to coursework and scholarship, the availability of the think tank’s research in full-text on the website, and the think tank’s reputation and influence upon policy making. The list represents a mixture of partisan and non-partisan think tanks."
EXAMPLE OF A SEARCH: Type TRUMP AND IMMIGRATION to see a variety of analyses, publications and thought pieces from NGOS and Think Tanks. Some of these will note alternative policies; some will agree with the Administration; others will disagree.
This Search Engine is truly fantastic for all Social Science, Political Science researchers who are looking to research and view how and what NGOs and Think Tanks analyze any particular policy or issue, domestic or worldwide.
(One search possibility is ORLANDO LETELIER or RONNI MOFFETT)
BACKGROUND ARTICLE:
Leslie, Ian. “Google Makes Us All Dumber: The Neuroscience of Search Engines.” Salon, 12 Oct. 2014. Web. 18 Oct. 2014. www.salon.com/2014/10/12/google_makes_us_all_dumber_the_neuroscience_of_search_engines
(My point here is that using many of the Search Engines in this web site will make your research far more
robust and much more effective than just using Google.com alone)
Website by Stephen Perry
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