Bibliography

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For "Works Cited" lists, see Citation. "Bibliology" redirects here. For the theological study of the nature of the Bible, see Biblical theology.

Bibliographies at the University Library of Graz

Bibliography (from Greek , bibliographia, literally "book writing"), as a practice, is the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology[1] (from Greek -, logia). On the whole, bibliography is not concerned with the literary content of books, but rather the sources of books how they were designed, edited, printed, circulated, reprinted, collected.[2] A bibliography, the product of the practice of bibliography, is a systematic list of books and other works such as journal articles. Bibliographies range from "works cited" lists at the end of books and articles to complete, independent publications. As separate works, they may be in bound volumes such as those shown on the right, or computerized bibliographic databases. A library catalog, while not referred to as a "bibliography," is bibliographic in nature. Bibliographical works are almost always considered to be tertiary sources. Bibliographic works differ in the amount of detail depending on the purpose, and can be generally divided into two categories: enumerative bibliography (also called compilative, reference or systematic), which results in an overview of publications in a particular category, and analytical, or critical, bibliography, which studies the production of books.[3][4] In earlier times, bibliography mostly focused on books. Now, both categories of bibliography cover works in other formats including recordings, motion pictures and videos, graphic objects, databases, CD-ROMs[5] and websites.
Contents
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1 Etymology

2 Enumerative bibliography 3 Analytical bibliography 4 Non-book material 5 Bibliography as a field of study 6 See also 7 References 8 External links

[edit]Etymology
The word bibliographia () was used by Greek writers in the first three centuries AD to mean the copying of books by hand. In the 12th century, the word started being used for "the intellectual activity of composing books". The 17th century then saw the emergence of the modern meaning, that of description of books.[6]

[edit]Enumerative

bibliography

A bibliography is a list of writings that share a common factor: this may be a topic, a language, a period, or some other theme. The list may be comprehensive or selective. One particular instance of this is the list of sources used or considered in preparing a work, sometimes called a reference list. Citation formats vary, but an entry for a book in a bibliography usually contains the following information:

author(s) title publisher date of publication

An entry for a journal or periodical article usually contains:

author(s) article title journal title volume pages date of publication

A bibliography may be arranged by author, topic, or some other scheme. Annotated bibliographies give descriptions about how each source is useful to an author in constructing a paper or argument. These

descriptions, usually a few sentences long, provide a summary of the source and describe its relevance. Reference management software may be used to keep track of references and generate bibliographies as required. Bibliographies differ from library catalogs by including only relevant items rather than all items present in a particular library. However, the catalogs of some national libraries effectively serve as national bibliographies, as the national libraries own almost all their countries' publications.

[edit]Analytical

bibliography

The critical study of bibliography can be subdivided into descriptive (or physical), historical, and textual bibliography. Descriptive bibliography is the close examination of a book as a physical object, recording its size, format, binding, and so on, while historical bibliography takes a broader view of the context in which a book is produced, in particular, printing, publishing and bookselling. Textual bibliography is another name for textual criticism.

[edit]Non-book

material

Systematic lists of media other than books can be referred to with terms formed analogously to bibliography:

Discography recorded music Filmography films Webography (or webliography) websites (the first use of the word "webliography" recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary dates from June 1995)

Arachniography is a term coined by NASA research historian Andrew J. Butrica, which means a reference list of URLs about a particular subject. It is equivalent to a bibliography in a book. The name derives from arachne in reference to a spider and its web.[7]

[edit]Bibliography

as a field of study

Bibliography used to be a central part of library science (or library and information science, LIS) and documentation science. The founder of documentation, Paul Otlet wrote about "the science of bibliography".[8][9] However, there have recently been voices claiming that "the bibliographical paradigm" is obsolete, and it is not today common in LIS. A defence of the bibliographical paradigm was provided by Hjrland (2007).[10] The quantitative study of bibliographies is known as bibliometrics, which is today an influential subfield in LIS

Key Info
Make a list to keep track of ALL the books, magazines, and websites you read as you follow
your background research plan. Later this list of sources will become your bibliography.

Most teachers want you to have at least three written sources of information. Write down, photocopy, or print the following information for each source you find. You can
use the Science Buddies Bibliography Worksheet to help you.

Collect this information for each printed source:

Collect this information for each Web Site:

author name title of the publication (and the title of the article if it's a magazine or encyclopedia) date of publication the place of publication of a book the publishing company of a book the volume number of a magazine or printed encyclopedia the page number(s)

author and editor names (if available) title of the page (if available) the company or organization who posted the webpage the Web address for the page (called a URL) the last date you looked at the page

The bibliographic information for different types of resources are located in different places, so
you may need to do some detective work to get all of the information for your bibliography. Try looking in these places:

o the title page of a book, encyclopedia or dictionary o the heading of an article o the front, second, or editorial page of the newspaper o the contents page of a journal or magazine o the header (at the top) or footer (at the bottom) of a Web site o the About or the Contact page of a Web site When it is time to turn in your Bibliography, type all of your sources into a list. Use the
examples in MLA Format Examples or APA Format Examples as a template to insure that each source is formatted correctly.

List the sources in alphabetical order using the author's last name. If a source has more than

one author, alphabetize using the first one. If an author is unknown, alphabetize that source using the title instead.

Overview

A bibliography is a listing of the books, magazines, and Internet sources that you use in designing, carrying out, and understanding your science fair project. But, you develop a bibliography only after first preparing a background research plan -- a roadmap of the research questions you need to answer. Before you compose your bibliography, you will need to develop your background research plan. With your background research plan in hand, you will find sources of information that will help you with your science fair project. As you find this information it will be important for you to write down where the sources are from. You can use the Bibliography Worksheet to help you, just print out a few copies and take them with you to the library. As you find a source, write in all of the necessary information. This way, when you are typing your bibliography you won't need to go back to the library and find any missing information. The more information you write down about your source, the easier it will be for you to find if you want to read it again. When you are writing your report, you will use the sources in your bibliography to remind you of different facts and background information you used for your science fair project. Each time you use some information from a source, you will need to cite the source that it came from. To cite a source, simply put the author's name and the date of the publication in parentheses (Author, date) in your text. If the person reading your report wants to find the information and read more about it, they can look up the reference in your bibliography for more detail about the source. That is why each source you use must be listed in a detailed bibliography with enough information for someone to go and find it by themselves. Your bibliography should include a minimum of three written sources of information about your topic from books, encyclopedias, and periodicals. You may have additional information from the Web if appropriate.

Examples of Bibliography Formats

There are standards for documenting sources of information in research papers. Even though different journals may use a slightly different format for the bibliography, they all contain the same basic information. The most basic information that each reference should have is the author's name, the title, the date, and the source. Different types of sources have different formatting in the bibliography. In American schools, the two most commonly used guidelines for this formatting are published by the MLA (Modern Language Association) and the APA (American Psychological Association). The MLA guidelines call for the bibliography to be called Works Cited. Science Buddies has summarized some of the most common MLA formats for your use: MLA Format Examples. The APA guidelines call for the bibliography to be called the Reference List. Science Buddies has summarized some of the most common APA formats for your use: APA Format Examples. Your teacher will probably tell you which set of guidelines to use. On the Science Buddies website we use the following guidelines:

APA format for online sources MLA format for all other sources APA (author, date, page) format for citations in our articles