Tuesday Tips: Read the Footnotes

Taking a break from my roundup of keyboard shortcuts to share one of my favorite librarian tricks: read the footnotes.

When it comes to finding resources, the easiest way to find more sources is to read the footnotes. Start with an article, book, whatever that you think is great, and then read the footnotes (or works cited or bibliography or hyperlinks). That will give you a ton of additional information to look at for your work. 

Formally, this is called citation chaining. You are essentially going backwards and forewords in the scholarship to see what people are writing and thinking about a topic.

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