LibGuides: Latino Research Institute: Using sources to find more sources

Scholarly conversation

It is common for scholars to scroll to the end of an article to peruse a bibliography before she even reads the article. She's wondering, "What research has this author engaged with?" "What evidence does this author find compelling?" She knows the conversation around a topic very well - you don't yet! But bibliographies are still helpful to you.

As you work through the article, notice where the author cites arguments or evidence.

When you find points where an author seems to disagree with another source, or when an author seems to be building upon previous sources, go find those.

Here are some ways to do that:

Copy and paste the citation, in whole or in part, into the search bar on www.lib.utexas.edu

Or, do the same on Google Scholar:

Google Scholar
Unlimited users.
Google Scholar uses the popular Google search engine to enable searches for scholarly materials such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from broad areas of research. It includes a variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web. Google Scholar includes full text and citations.

Use this link to access Google Scholar, and see our Google Scholar Guide for information on using this resource.

Decoding citations

All of the below citations are in different styles. Why are there so many different citation styles? I don't know. There are hundreds of them, believe it or not, and they all are built within a subject area that decides what elements are most important to those doing research in that area.

RAAT, W. Dirk, (2012) “World History, MesoAmerica, and the Native American Southwest by W. Dirk Raat”, History Compass 10/7 (2012): 537–548

I know this is an article because there are page numbers. The 10/7 refers to a volume and issue number. All periodicals (magazines, newspapers and journals) have volume and issue numbers.

When you see a title in quotation marks, it's likely an article...unless...

MORSE, Richard (1988) “Cites and People” Rethinking the Latin American City, edited by Richard Morse and Jorge E. Hardoy (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press) pp. 3-20.

This has quotation marks and it also has page numbers - but it's not an article. It's a chapter from a book. Books that contain the work of multiple authors have editors. Books are published by presses in a particular city.

Here's a citation for a book with an author and no editors credited. You can see just one title in italics:

Obama, B. (2004). Dreams from my father: A story of race and inheritance. New York: Three Rivers Press.