How To Do Library Research

Finding one helpful resource (book, article, etc.) on your topic can lead you to more information on a topic. This is especially true for academic books and articles that have citations.

Here are some steps to help you find more information using what you already have:

1. Look through the resource for citations in the text or at the end of a chapter, article, or end of a book. Here are some examples:

When you see a resource that you want to investigate further, put the title (and/or author(s)) into Find It!. If it is not in Find It!, request the material through Interlibrary Loan.

2. In addition to reviewing citations in a work you can often find resources that cite the information you already found. You can do this in Find It!, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. See below for examples. And note, this works better for the sciences and social sciences.

Find It!

In Find It! use the red arrows using the arrow the points down to see materials in the reference list of the original source. Use the up arrows to find materials that cite this source.

Web of Science

In Web of Science, articles have links to citations (the sources in which the original source is cited) and to references (the list of citations at the end of the original article). It can get confusing, but both will go to lots of sources that are related to the original source.

Google Scholar

In Google Scholar, you will find a Cited by X number link below many sources. This link goes to the sources that cite the original source.

Note that the counts of cited by, citations, and items found through up arrows may be different for the same article depending upon the database. Again, you don't need to worry about this, it is just another way to find related sources.