Benefits of Using Kelvin Smith Library:

Three primary reasons to use Kelvin Smith Library resources:

KSL provides freely available books, articles, and databases for CWRU students, faculty, and staff
KSL offers resources requested by CWRU faculty
KSL's search engine shows you resources reviewed by librarians and other information professionals

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Reminder: If you do use Google Scholar or Google, do not pay for a journal article from a publisher's website. Students, faculty, and staff can utilize OhioLINK and Interlibrary Loan (ILLIAD) to access materials for free that are not readily available via Full Text on KSL platforms.

Benefits of Google Scholar

Google Scholar can be a helpful backup resource relying on Google's ability to scrape information from a wide variety of sites, including academic abstracts and some open-source websites.
You can check for papers or books that cited material you are interested in, a process also known as citation chaining.
You can filter results by recent year using the menu on the left-hand side of the screen to see older or newer articles.

Drawbacks of Google Scholar

Tends to present older and possibly outdated results based on the number of times that information has been cited by others.
Book chapter and article links will often send you to a publisher's website that asks for payment, unlike KSL databases.

Google Scholar page with the search term "robotics" shows filters, article publication dates, possible KSL access points

Benefits of Google:

Google is easy to search and provides a great deal of information.
Some sites can be reliable with peer-reviewed, open-source content such as National Institute of Health publications (.nih) or offer information on current laws and cultural and historical artifacts as with the Library of Congress (.gov and .loc.gov).
Google can be a great place to "pre-search" and get ideas for potential topics; help you identify keywords; and give you a sense of how your topic is being talked about in generalized information sources like news publications and social media discourse.

Drawbacks of Google:

Google's new AI function presents information that often is not from the most reliable or informative sources, but instead seems to rely on Search Engine Optimization (SEO), a service that companies often pay for. Check the linked sources to any AI summaries you use from Google.
Sites ending in the address .org, .com, or .net will not necessarily be created and maintained by experts on a given topic.
Misinformation and disinformation are risks associated with using internet results produced by Google.

Main Takeway

Using KSL resources provides you with sources that are easier to evaluate and are also freely available for students, faculty, and staff.