Library Skills

Cite Them Right Referencing Activity 

Havard Referencing

Using the Referencing Tool in Word

This video further demonstrates how you can add citations, bibliographies and cross references to your Microsoft Word 2010 documents. 

Reference Lists and Bibliographies

What is the Difference?

A reference list is the detailed list of references that are cited in your work. Your Reference List should be located on a separate page at the end of your assignment and titled References. It should include the full details of all your in-text references, arranged alphabetically A-Z by author surname. 

A bibliography is a detailed list of references cited in your work, plus the background readings or other material that you may have read, but not actually cited. 

Different courses may require just a reference list, just a bibliography, or even both.  It is better to check with your tutor first.

Annotated Bibliography

An annotated bibliography provides a brief account of the available research on a given topic. It is a list of research sources that includes concise descriptions and evaluations of each source. The annotation usually contains a brief summary of content and a short analysis or evaluation. Depending on your assignment you may be asked to reflect, summarise, critique, evaluate or analyse the source.

Strategies to Define the Scope of your Annotated Bibliography

It is important that the scope of sources cited and described in your bibliography are well-defined and sufficiently narrow in coverage to ensure that you're not overwhelmed by the number of potential items to consider including. Many of the general strategies used to narrow a topic for a research paper are the same that you can use to define the scope of your bibliography. These are:

• Aspect -- choose one lens through which to view the research problem, or look at just one facet of your topic [e.g., rather than a bibliography of sources about the role of food in religious rituals, create a bibliography on the role of food in Hindu ceremonies].
• Time -- the shorter the time period to be covered, the more narrow the focus [e.g., rather than political scandals of the 20th century, cite literature on political scandals during the 1930s and the 1990s].
• Geography -- the smaller the region of analysis, the fewer items there are to consider including in your bibliography [e.g., rather than cite sources about trade relations in West Africa, include only sources that examine trade relations between Niger and Cameroon].
• Type -- focus your bibliography on a specific type or class of people, places, or things [e.g., rather than health care provision in Japan, cite research on health care provided to the elderly population in Japan].
• Source -- your bibliography includes specific types of materials [e.g., only books, only scholarly journal articles, only films, only archives, etc.]. However, be sure to describe why only one type of source is appropriate.
• Combination -- use two or more of the above strategies to focus your bibliography very narrowly or to broaden coverage of a very specific research problem.

Secondary Referencing