It can be sometimes be notoriously hard to find correct references. For example, I was going to mention a certain theory of extra dimensions in a paper (this is experimental particle physics). A colleague pointed out to me that the paper I was quoting was pretty derivative, and that there has been done equivalent, but more comprehensive work a couple of years earlier, although the theory had a different name back then. The newer paper wasn't quoting the older one (directly), and without expertise in this sub-field, I would have had a hard time finding the other papers. Now not everyone has a helpful colleague who seemingly knows all the literature, so I think this site can be a pretty good place to find references.
I'd even go further and say, this site is pretty good to find ideas. I know such-and-such, but who said that and why is this so? This site helped me twice: here where I was pointed to a standard reference which I knew superficially, but didn't know that it answered my question, and here I had a silly idea, wondered if someone smarter had already thought about it, but I didn't know what to search for, and I got a tip that got me started.
We just have to make sure that
- This doesn't invite lazy people to let us do there homework for them ;-) and
- The references stay recent as the field develops and new papers come out. This can be done by posting new answers, or using the edit function (which seems rarely used).