One way to find more sources is to look within there references of sources you have already found. Scholarly publications provide reference lists or bibliographies that you can use to find related information by understanding and decoding citations.
To decode a citation, you'll need to be familiar with the rules for different information sources (such as books, articles, etc.) in the style used by your field. These examples will show you how to decode citations for books and articles in the two most common styles: MLA and APA.
Book Format Examples
MLA
🌙 ⭐ ☀️ 🌧️
Author(s). Title of Book. Publisher, Publication date.
🌙 ⭐ ☀️ 🌧️
Example: Carillo, Ellen. MLA Guide to Digital Literacy. The Modern Language Association of America, 2019.
APA
🌙 🌧️ ⭐ ☀️
Author(s). (Year). Title. Publisher.
🌙 🌧️ ⭐ ☀️
Example: Carillo, E.C. (2019). MLA guide to digital literacy. The Modern Language Association of America.
These are the citations for the book MLA Guide to Digital Literacy by Ellen Carillo. Notice that both citation formats give you important identifying information: the name of the author, the title of the book, and the year published. This information can be used to search for the book to find for your own research.
Want to give it a try? Decode either of the formats below to find these books:
1.) Goodson, Patricia. Becoming An Academic Writer: 50 Exercises for Paced, Productive, and Powerful Writing. 3rd ed., Sage, 2024.
2.) Quaratiello, A. R. (2024). The college student's research companion: Finding, evaluating, and citing the resources you need to succeed (Sixth edition). ALA Neal-Schuman.
Article Format Examples
MLA
🌙 ⭐ 🌧️ 🌪️ 🌳 ☀️ 🌷 🍀
Author(s). "Title of Article." Title of Journal, Volume, Issue, Year, pages, DOI if applicable.
🌙 ⭐
Example: Aharony, Noa, and Tali Gazit. "Students' Information Literacy Self-Efficacy: An Exploratory Study."
🌧️ 🌪️ 🌳 ☀️ 🌷
Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, vol. 52, no. 1, 2020, pp. 224-36,
🍀
https://doi.org/10.1177/0961000618790312.
APA
🌙 ☀️ ⭐ 🌧️ 🌪️ 🌳 🌷 🍀
Author(s). (Year). Title of article. Title of Journal, volume(issue), pages. DOI if applicable.
🌙 ☀️ ⭐
Example: Aharony, N., & Gazit, T. (2020). Students' information literacy self-efficacy: An exploratory study.
🌧️ 🌪️🌳 🌷
Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 52(1), 224-236.
🍀
https://doi.org/10.1177/0961000618790312.
These are the citations for the article Students' Information Literacy Self-Efficacy: An Exploratory Study by Noa Aharony and Tali Gazit. Like our book examples, these citations provide you with the name of the authors, the title of the article, and the year published. If a DOI is not present, this will help you track down the article by searching for the title and author or doing a journal search for the journal title which will allow you to access the volume and issue in which the article was published.
The information found in citations is also the information you would provide if you want to request an Inter-Library Loan for an article or book.