Guide on the Side: Reading a Bibliography Single-Page View

When our professors ask us to "find sources," many of us go straight to library databases or Google. Sometimes, there is a better, faster way. If you are reading a book or article that is on topic, check the bibliography to see if the author used any sources that might be of use to you.

This is not cheating; in fact, this is often how your professors do their own research.

In this tutorial, we'll show you how.

The first step is to find the bibliography. In this article, it's called References (as per the APA style). If your paper is written in MLA style, this section will be called Works Cited. Find it now, and click the arrow at the bottom of this page, when you have found it.

This Reference list is unusual, as it starts near the bottom of the page (rather than at the top).

What page does the References list start on?

If you found it on page 100, you're in the right place.

Now that you've found it, we'll ask you a few questions about it that will help you to read the References list more closely.

Reference lists are comprised of books, journals and other sources. It's important to be able to tell which is which.

Each answer contains three titles. In which answer are all of the titles books?

Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change // Emotional intelligence // A Sense of belonging: Improving student retention What matters in college // Mindset: The new psychology of success // Athletic investment and academic resilience in a national sample of African American females and males in the middle grades The color of success: Race and high achieving urban youth // How children succeed: Grit, curiosity, and the hidden power of character // Leaving college: Rethinking the causes and cures of student attrition

Often, it is important to think about when something was published. Depending on your topic and approach, you might need the most recent and up-to-date material, or you might need material published before a certain date.

Which of these is the OLDEST item published?

Morales & Trotman, Promoting academic resilience in multicultural America: Factors affecting student success. Morales & Trotman, A focus on hope: 50 resilient students speak. McCubbin, Challenges to the definition of resilience.

As you saw in our earlier question, format is important. An item may exist in multiple formats. For example, the same title might be a book and e-book or an article might be in a print journal and online. There are clues in the bibliography to let you know which format the author used.

Look at Wang and Gordan's 1994 item, Educational resilience in inner city America: Challenges and prospects. Which format is it?

Book Scholarly article Newspaper article

For scholarly articles, you might be interested in the article itself, or in the journal that published it.

There is a scholarly article by Gofen, Family capital: How first-generation higher education students break the intergenerational cycle. What is the name of the journal that published this article?

Education and Urban Society Family Relations Animal Behavioral Scientist

Once you've found an article that you want to read, it's important to know how to get your hands on a copy.

Find the reference to Jehangir, Higher education and first-generation students: Cultivating community, voice, and place for
the new majority. While this is a book (published here in New York City by Palgrave Macmillan), it is available as an e-book.

HINT: You'll have to use the Hunter College Libraries website to complete this question.

Does the Hunter College Libraries have this book, in either format?

We do not have this book at all -- I checked CUNY+ We have both the e-book and the print book available. We only have the e-book.

** BONUS QUESTION **

As we mentioned in the beginning, the main reason that we "read" bibliographies is to find sources that might help us to answer our own research questions.

If your research question was How do first generation students fare in college? which source would you want to look for?

Source about first-generation college students

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