How to write a bibliography

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Bibliography style guide

This Bibliography style guide is designed to assist you in providing accurate citations of the source material used in the writing of essays, reports, etc. 

The writing of any essay, report, assignment or reading list requires adequate acknowledgment and documentation of the source material used. Bibliographies and footnotes should reflect this.

Bibliographies

A bibliography is an alphabetical listing of the resources you have used. You should give enough information to easily identify the items and always be consistent in how you list them.

Books

Author, title (in italics), edition (if not the first), place of publication, publisher and date.

Eg. Ü Lunn, H. Over the top with Jim.

St Lucia, Qld.: Queensland University Press, 1989.

Articles in books

Author of article, title of article (in quotation marks), author/editor of book, title of book (in italics), place of publication, publisher, date and page numbers.

Eg. Cochrane, J. 'Influencing the politics of health reform' in Gray, G. & Pratt, R. (eds.), Issues in Australian nursing 2, Melbourne: Churchill Livingstone, 1995, pp. 59-84.

Articles in journals

Author of article, title of article (in quotation marks), title of journal (in italics), volume, issue, date and page numbers.

Eg. Tymchuk, A.J., 'Moving towards integration of services for parents with intellectual disabilities', in Journal of intellectual developmental disability, volume 24, number 1, 1999, pp. 59-74.

Conference papers

Author of article, title of article (in quotation marks), name of conference(in italics), location of conference (in italics), date of conference (in italics), editor, place of publication, publisher, date and page numbers.

Eg. Dula, A., 'Regulation of private commercial space activities', Proceedings of the 24^th colloquium on the law of outer space, Rome, Italy, 6-12 September 1981, New York: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1982, pp. 25-46.

Individual work on the Internet

Author, year, title of document (in italics), type of medium, edition, URL and access date.

Eg. Smith, A. 2001, Finding information on the Internet [online] www.internet.com.au [accessed 11 October 2002]

Electronic journal article on the Internet

Author, year, title of article (in quotation marks), journal title (in italics), type of medium, volume, issue, page numbers, URL and access date.

Eg. Morgan, L. 2001, 'Finding information on the Internet', Online magazine [online], 21 (4), pp. 5-7, www.online.com.au [accessed 6 October 2002]

Personal email

Sender, sender's email address (in brackets), date, subject of message (in italics), email to recipient, recipient's email address (in brackets).

Eg. Morgan, L. (lmorgan@egtafe.vic.edu.au) 3 October 2002, Finding information, email to Carol Foots (cfoots@netcom.au)

Footnotes

In addition to the bibliography, you will need to make individual references to any direct quotations, viewpoints or paraphrasing in the text of your work. This is done by means of footnoting. Footnotes may appear together at the end of the text or at the bottom of each relevant page.

There are two methods:

• Numerical or note method
• Author/date or Harvard method

Numerical method examples

He sees the danger stemming not from a single computer file, but from the possibility of amalgamating many sources of information to present a composite picture. 1

Martin and Norman seem especially to fear the abuses which can come from a network of police computers, interlocking credit bureau files and worst of all - a national data centre.2

1. Steele, K.W. 'The individual in a computerised society', in Data trend, volume 8, 1971, p. 9.
2. Martin, J. & Norman A., The computerised society, Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin, 1973.

Author/date examples

Following each quotation, you need to only use the author's suname/s, date and page numbers - the full reference will appear in the bibliography.

He sees the danger stemming not from a single computer file, but from the possibility of amalgamating many sources of information to present a composite picture. (Steele, 1971, p. 9)

Martin and Norman seem especially to fear the abuses which can come from a network of police computers, interlocking credit bureau files and worst of all - a national data centre. (Martin & Norman, 1980, pp. 510-511)

References

Anderson, Jonathan and Poole, Millicent Assignment and thesis writing, 4^th ed., Milton, Qld.: Wiley, 2001

Style manual: for authors, editors and printers, 6^th ed., Milton, Qld.: Wiley, 2002

Last updated:  14 December, 2007 12:03 PM