Some thoughts about Citing Sources and Keeping Track of Citation Information
A bibliography is a list of texts related to a given subject. An annotated bibliography is a list of related texts that also features brief descriptions of what each text covers. Ordinarily, a bibliography is organized alphabetically to facilitate the location of a listed author’s work(s).
A works cited page is a specific kind of bibliography—one that lists all the texts quoted, paraphrased, summarized, or mentioned by name in a research paper. All works cited pages are bibliographies, but not all bibliographies are works cited pages. A works cited page should list every text that your research paper makes explicit use of. It should not feature any titles that you don’t at least mention by name.
An interesting option: Writers sometimes wish not only to refer their readers to the works that their papers explicitly cite but also to closely related texts. You can accomplish this by preparing a separate bibliography in addition to your works cited page. You’ll occasionally see such pages labeled, “For Further Reading” or “General Bibliography.” Sometimes a writer will combine his or her works cited with a bibliography of related readings. If you choose to do this, call this hybrid page something like “Works Cited and for Further Reading.”
Important: Works cited pages are not separate documents to be handed in with your research papers, they are an integral part of the paper itself. They should therefore be paginated in sequence with the rest of your paper. That is, if you have 8 pages of text, your works cited page (and any other bibliographies you wish to include) should begin on page 9.
In order to help readers make the best possible use of bibliographies, communities of scholars, publishers, and various professional organizations have developed various citation styles. These styles have specific requirements for organizing and presenting these key pieces of bibliographic information.
There are several widely used citation styles, each featuring its own requirements concerning the order in which bibliographic information is presented and about such minute details as capitalization and punctuation rules. While these rules are arbitrary, they are not optional or unimportant. You may use any citation style you wish, but be sure you observe carefully all of its rules.
In addition to the information supplied in the handbook required for this course, there are a variety of online citation guides that can help you figure out how to list properly the type of source you’ve used according to the style you’ve chosen.
There are any number of ways of organizing bibliographic information to make compiling any type of bibliography easy. Despite how fussy some teachers can be about such things as note cards and/or researcher’s logs, there is no “right” method for doing this. What’s essential is that you develop a method that works for your particular organizational style (or lack thereof!).
If you have a system for keeping track of your research materials that works well for you, then keep using it. If you don’t, my big organizational secret is the photocopier—something that every library has. I photocopy everything that I know I’m going to use—and pretty much anything I might conceivably want to use. Since I know that, no matter what, I’ll need the author’s name, the title, the publication information, date, and the page numbers, I make sure to copy whatever is necessary to get that information right when it comes time to compile my Works Cited page.
• For books, I copy the title page and/or the copyright page. Frequently, I can tell just by looking at the table of contents which chapters in a book are relevant to my research project. So, I’ll copy those chapters as well.
• For periodicals, I copy the entire article and the page featuring the name of the journal, the date, and the issue and volume numbers. Since I’ve photocopied the entire article, I’ll also have the title of the article, the name of the author(s), and the page range—all of which will are necessary information for my Works Cited page.
• For Internet sources, I just print out whatever looks useful. But, to make sure that I have all the information I need when I get around to citing online sources, I make sure that the URL appears somewhere on the document. If not, I hand-write the URL, the date, and any other identifying information I’ll need for a bibliographic citation (author’s name, title of the article, etc.).
When working from my home computer, I typically save web articles to a project folder I create on my hard-drive. That way I can cut any information I want from the web article I’m consulting and paste it directly into my research paper. When working at the library, I just save online articles to my flash drive and put them on my hard drive when I get home.
I keep all the paper that this photocopy-intensive method generates in one or more file folders on my desk. For really large projects, I use a series of hanging file folders with labels to help me locate specific sources.
The beauty of this system is that I don’t have to hand-write very much and yet I have an exact copy of anything that I might want to quote, reference, or read. Another benefit of this system is that I can use a highlighter, make notes in the margins, and stick on post-its without defacing an original source.