Ah yeah that's a good one too. Funny, one could say that this is a good way of finding interesting information, while also finding methods of finding interesting information.
more detailed, but following the bibliography chain also can give the equivalent of a change log history. with the idea of, "hey, noone took this fork in the road because <insert issue(s) at time of publication>. currently though, the <issues aka missing/way to complex at the time/to costly/more supporting research needed> are reasonable/not unsurmountable."
lot of thesis papers / projects are "proof of concept"
library congress on-line stuff : https://eresources.loc.gov https://eresources.loc.gov/search~S9/m?SEARCH=Dissertation
"normalize" electronic data : https://sindice.com