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:
Use this link to access Google Scholar, and see our Google Scholar Guide for information on using this resource.
If you encounter a warning about the security certificate when using the FindIt@UT tool in Google Scholar, you can learn more about that using this guide.
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...
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