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About Reference Finder

Reference Finder is one of the research tools provided by the National Academies Press, initially released in August 2005. Other tools include the Chapter Skim and our rich, tailored search engine, all of which focus on analyzing the rich text thousands of books on our site.

The difference is that Reference Finder, instead of analyzing the text of NAP books, works with content you provide.

How It Works

Reference Finder uses internally-developed content analysis algorithms on content you provide to either find relevant information from among the reports available on NAP.edu. Copy and paste up to 8 pages of content from an outside source: an article, a rough draft of your own, etc. Then click Find Relevant Reports.

Reference Finder analyzes the text you provide, then takes the top phrases it's identified and throws them at the NAP search engine — which then aggregates the responses and identifies the reports that are most likely to have content that might apply to your needs.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to buy the books the Reference Finder finds on the NAP site in order to read them?

All NAP publications are freely available for browsing, reading page-by-page, skimming, searching, or otherwise perusing. Of course, if you would like to purchase a book, that's fine too.

Can I link to Reference Finder from my own site?

Please do. We hope to see this tool being widely used to assist in better discoverability of quality content within the vast resources available online.