Google Scholar beats established academic databases?
I went looking just now for references to two highly influential books about the media - Thompson, J. B. (1995) The Media and Modernity : A Social Theory of the Media, Polity Press, Cambridge, UK and Meyrowitz, J. (1985) No Sense of Place : The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press, Oxford ; New York.
For the former, Google Scholar found 442 references. For the latter it found 486 references.
I also tried looking up references to those books in four leading academic reference databases the Web of Knowledge, Elseviers normally-excellent Scopus, the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences and Communication Abstracts (all four require academic subscriptions to access).
Whether searching for author name or title, the first two found very few records, almost all of them to do with academic papers these authors had written rather than the books in question. The IBSS at least found some reviews of the books in academic journals which was some help and Communication Abstracts contained a short summary of the Meyrowitz book but neither was much help in finding books referenced by other books either.
Admittedly, these databases are primarily aimed at indexing and cross-referencing papers, but for better or worse much of the scholarship in media studies is published in books (or book chapters).
It could be that I failed to use the right syntax to bring up the references I needed Web of Knowledges can be a little tricky in places - and the Google Scholar citations dont give you as much information (eg abstracts) once you have found them - doubtless many of them are of little utility - but considering the short length of time Google Scholar has been working I am impressed at the speed with which it is closing the distance to its competition.
Is there a trick I have missed?