Introduction to bibliographies
Why include a bibliography
Writing references
How to prepare a bibliography
How to compile a bibliography
Bibliography notes
What is plagiarism?
The Harvard System
Writing References, Easy Examples
Introduction
Whenever you complete a piece of written work whether it is an essay, an assignment or a project it is good practice to include at the end of your work a bibliography. Your tutors, examiners and moderators will expect to see a bibliography and will take it into account when marking your work. (On some courses it may be that there is a formal requirement for you to include a bibliography in a specified format and we will look at these later.)
A bibliography is simply a list of all of the information sources that you have used to produce your work. Each source of information should be carefully listed even if they are not books.
Some sources of information that you might use to complete your work are:| abstracts | audio tapes | books |
| CD-ROM | compact discs | DVD |
| internet sites | interviews | leaflets |
| magazines | maps | newspapers |
| paintings | photographs | plays |
| questionnaires | radio | reference books |
| statistics | television | video tapes |
With such a wide variety of information sources available to you, you can understand the need to record them all. Reading a number of books, collecting together magazine and newspaper articles, watching and taking notes from T.V. represents a lot of hard work and effort for which you should receive credit.
The details which record information sources are known as references and you must give a reference whenever you draw upon an information source either:
- as your inspiration in general
- as the source of a particular theory, argument or viewpoint
- for specific information such as statistics or case studies
- for direct quotations from another writer's work
- for texts which you paraphrase rather than quote
You do not need to make notes whilst reading this guide and there is no need to print out these pages because a ready made page of notes has been prepared for you. The page of notes on its own will not be enough guidance for you to produce an accurate and correct bibliography. Read these pages first and then print out the notes page if you need it.