if you haven't come across it, Ed Summer's 'Etudier' python tool for grabbing google scholar citation graph is a really nice little thing. http://github.com/edsu/etudier . point it at a reference, get the grab that cites it/it cites. pass it a search, get the citation landscape around the term. do a bit of sna on the graph, & you can id works that bridge the clumps.
of course, the six of you following me already saw me talk about this on birdsite.