Google Scholar

Google has long been THE internet search engine, and for many good reasons. Its Google Scholar site is a fascinating venture into locating the sort of research that both college students and professors rely upon so heavily. Has Google Scholar overtaken resources like Academic Search and similar databases though, in the way Google has long since surpassed HotBot?

At this point we'd have to say the answer is absolutely not! Here is one simple example of where Google Scholar falls short. Let's say you need articles on agoraphobia for some psych research. If you go to Google Scholar, you find links to a number of articles, many of which are not full text, and the most recent are at least 10 years old. If you go to Academic Search though, our big general purpose article database, you find over 300 full text articles, the most recent from September 2008! This isn't even including such databases as PsychArticles and PsychInfo....