Bibliographic Mining and Cited Reference Searching allow you to use an article or book you have already found, and then trace the history of its ideas both backwards and forward in time. These techniques can find many more articles on your topic, and help you understand your topic in context.
First lets talk about Bibliographic Mining. This is a technique you have probably already been using, it is simply reviewing the reference list at the end of an article, book, dissertation or some other work. You can then “mine” the bibliography for interesting resources.
When you are searching in the Library databases your search results may include a link that will take you directly to the reference list of an article. Look for links such as “cited references” or “references”.
If you see something interesting in this reference list, you can click on the html, pdf or the check citation linker link to see if it is available in the Library.
With the complete citations provided in the reference list, you can also use the Journal and Book Locator tool to see if the resource is elsewhere in the Capella Library.
If the journal or book is not available in the Capella Library you can use Interlibrary Loan. We will request the material and send it to you either electronically, or, in the case of print books, via UPS with a pre-paid return mailer.
Of course all of the articles you will find are older than the article or book you are reviewing. So how do you trace an article forward in time to see articles that have cited your article in newer research?
You would use a technique called Cited Reference Searching. This technique traces ideas presented in the article forward in time. It allows you to see who has cited the article you are reading. Most Library databases allow you to do cited reference searching. In your search results list you will links such as “cited by” or “times cited in this database.”
If you click on these links, the associated articles will be more recent than your article.
The location of the Bibliography Mining and the Cited Reference searching features varies by database. See the Library’s guide Bibliography Mining and Cited Reference Searching for database specific directions.
Cited Reference Searching tools in the Library databases are limited to the articles in that particular database, so you may be missing articles and books that are not included in the database.
One tool you can use to do Cited Reference Searching both inside and outside of the Capella Library is Google Scholar. Google Scholar works across the content of many databases and the open web, which means you will find more cited references.
Cited Reference Searching with Google Scholar is particularly effective if you have found only a couple of good articles on a topic, or your have a classic or seminal article on your topic.
There are many ways to find the article in Google Scholar. One of the most effective ways is to enter the last name of the author and the title of the article in quotation marks in the search box. The quotation marks tell Google to search the title as a phrase.
The “cited by” link will appear in the lower left hand portion of the entries on your results list.
Click on this link and you will see a list of articles and books that are more current than the article you have. These articles have cited the article you searched for.
You can set the Scholar Preferences in Google Scholar to link to the full text of articles inside the Capella library. You will then see a Full Text @Capella link across from the title of the article. If the article or book is not in the Capella Library, you can request the material through Interlibrary Loan.
If you need further assistance with this searching technique these links may help or please contact a Capella Librarian and we would be happy to help!