Did you know that you are searching our Summon web-scale discovery tool when you enter a search using the Library homepage main search box? Summon aggregates citation information from various sources including scholarly journals, databases, newspapers, conferences/congresses, and more. You can even choose to search widely and broadly outside of MSK’s physical and electronic collections.

There are a lot of options to choose from after clicking on a title of interest, so the screenshot below explains your options to improve your productivity when using Summon.

Google Scholar is a good database for when you are looking for an obscure topic and are not getting many results in other databases. While you are on-campus, you may notice a link in Google Scholar that says Fulltext@MSK. This allows you access to articles in the MSK Library’s electronic collection. You can set up Google Scholar to display these links while you are off-campus as well. Simply click on the Settings (or the gear icon) in Google Scholar, and choose Library Links. Then search for Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and check it off when it appears. When you are off-campus and click on the Fulltext@MSK button, you will be asked to login with your MSK username and employee ID number. Once logged in, you will have access to MSK’s electronic content.

Additionally, in Google Scholar Settings, you can set up Google Scholar to export individual citations to EndNote (only one at a time). Under Search Results, and Bibliography manager, select Show links to import citations into EndNote. Save your settings, and do a search in Google Scholar. You will now see a link to Import into EndNote. Make sure to have your EndNote library open before you click on the link and it will import into your EndNote library automatically.

A quick Google search can be very helpful when conducting research, but it can also be overwhelming and the results staggering. We’ve all been there. Here are a few helpful tips, with examples, for searching Google in a more efficient way.

1. Use quotes to search for an exact phrase – this will help to reduce results to the most relevant on your topic (example: “breast cancer brain metastases”)
2. Use the minus sign to eliminate results containing a certain word – another way to refine and focus the results (example: “breast cancer metastasis” -brain)
3. Search within specific websites only – perform a site search directly from Google with this feature (example: “breast cancer brain metastases” site:cancer.gov)
4. Search news archives going back to the mid-1880’s – a specific Google Newspapers search engine provides a robust interface for finding archived news items