This exercise introduces you to the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (AHCI). This index differs from most indexes by allowing you to find articles by searching through its footnotes.

In citation searching you must start with a known source that is relevant to your topic. It may be a book, a journal article, a conference paper, a dissertation, a technical report -- it can be any kind of knowledge record, and it can have been published last year or centuries ago. It doesn't matter. What a citation search will tell you is whether someone has written a subsequent journal article that cites that source in a footnote, as a follow-up discussion of it, or at least reference to it. The assumption is that a later work that cites an earlier one is probably talking about the same subject, and this usually proves to be the case.

You must already have a good source to start with; and there is no guarantee that the best sources are linked by citations -- it is quite possible that good works were produced entirely independently of each other. Sometimes, too, a good source will be cited by another in a context that is irrelevant to your interest.

                 Mann,Thomas. The Oxford Guide to Library Research

AHCI is included in the Web of Science Database. Once in the Web of Science, choose Full Search option. Check the box for Arts & Humanities Citation Index and choose the Cited Ref Search.

How many articles have cited Robert Tracy McKenzie's One South or many?: plantation belt and upcountry in Civil War-era Tennessee published in 1994. (hint: leave the CITED WORK box empty)

What is the most recent article citing McKenzie? Provide the complete citation. (Check off all relevant entrees and choose Search to see the list of articles)

Take a look at the cited references of this article. How many are there?

Take a look at the other articles citing McKenzie. What sort of topics are covered? If you were looking for more information on Tennessee during the Civil War, do you think these articles would be useful? Explain.

How many of the articles are actually book reviews of McKenzie's book?

Give a citation for one of the book reviews.

Any questions?