Google Scholar a curse or something revolutionary?

In 2004 Google launched a new service called Google Scholar it provides a search engine that indexes academic literature. Publishers have been invited to allow access to their publications by Google spiders, the only condition being that the publisher had to allow at least the abstract of the work to be freely visible to all. For the first time the public had access to publishing details of books and journals previously only viewed by subscription.

Something Revolutionary?

1. You don’t need a subscription to use and access information provided by different publishers.
2. It’s a citation index so you can find further information by following the “cited by” link.
3. You can transfer the records directly to Refworks if you set up your preferences correctly.
4. You can will get a link to full text material if it is subscribed to by Loughborough University or is freely available.

A Curse?

1. It claims to provide “peer reviewed” articles but each publisher sets their own standards for inclusion. There is not the quality control that is provided by a renowned database .
2. It only has access to certain publishers, not all will allow access to Google spiders and Google does not provide a list of which publishers have declined access.
3. When full text is provided no scanned images can be seen because of technical restraints .
4. There is no thesaurus or subject index to guide you in your choice of keywords.

Google is fast and efficient but does it produce quality goods?????