In her post When journal articles are hard to find, Bonnie Swoger, a Science and Technology librarian at SUNY Geneseo, explores the phenomena illustrated by this tweet:
“I cited this paper because everyone else has cited it, though noone has ever seen an actual copy #overlyhonestmethods” (twitter user @droenn)
Have you ever seen a paper cited everywhere (including Wikipedia), but have only been able to find a citation — and not a link to an actual paper — on Google Scholar? And have you gone on to cite it without finding the actual paper yourself? No judgment — rest assured that you’re not the only one who has done this!! But, we librarians can help you to avoid this situation (and the associated citation-related guilt). Give me a call (760-750-4342) , shoot me an email, or find me on chat and we can track down some elusive citations together!