You need to understand bibliographies, because, as well as needing to draw up the bibliography for your own project, you will encounter bibliographical citations in library catalogues (see Chapter 3) and in the bibliographies of the works of other writers.
A bibliography is a list of books and other printed sources. It does not usually contain citations of other types of sources such as pictures or personal letters and e-mails you have received – these are cited as footnotes or endnotes, or In brackets in your written text as you go along. Archived manuscript sources and Web sites, on the other hand, should be cited in your bibliography, while recorded music is cited separately, under a discography. Chapters 10 and 11 deal with the citation conventions for these other types of sources.
Together, the notes and bibliography form the system that allows readers to trace and check sources, and to follow them up. Your bibliography should include not just the sources you quote from or refer to, but also any that significantly influenced your writing, even if you do not quote from or refer to them directly.
Whereas the purpose of notes is to signal the points in a test where you have used specific sources, the purpose of the bibliography is to give complete details (bibliographical details) of publications and other sources in a way that will allow readers to track them down in library catalogues. For this to work efficiently, it is necessary for a bibliography to give the same information about, say, a book as is given in library catalogues. Consequently, all bibliographical citations require standard pieces of information (see page 72 below, “Where to find the bibliographical details of a book’). However, the order in which the information is given will vary depending on whether you use the short-title system (Fig. 4.1) or the author-date system (Fig. 4.2). The citation in both cases should include:
The name of the author or editor of the work;
The tile of the work;
The title of any larger work of which it is a part, and the name of the editor of this larger work (for example, you may have looked at a chapter of a book to which a number of people have contributed);
The volume number or series title (if there is one);
The edition number if it is not the first edition;
The place of publication and the name of the publisher (if the place of publication is part of the publishers` name – as with the University of Chicago Press or Oxford University Press – there is no need to give the place as well; if the town or city is not well known, you should also give the country or, for the USA, the state);
The date of publication.
The sources listed in a bibliography are given in alphabetical order of writers` or editors` surnames. If the author` s name is not known, use the abbreviation ‘Anon,’ for ‘Annaymous’, and list the book under ‘A’. If the publication is produced by an institution rather than a named person – for example, by a museum, or for an exhibition or concert – it should be listed in the alphabetical sequence under the initial letter of the first major word of the title (‘A’, ‘An’ and ‘The’ are not regarded as major words).
If you wish to list more than one work by the same author or editor, there is no need to repeat the author` s name each time. Instead, you can replace the name with a long dash like this: ----. If some of the works are written or edited jointly with another person, the other person` s name should follow the dash.
Two abbreviations that you may come across or need to use are ‘n.d.’ and ‘n.p.’.
‘n.d.’ means ‘no date’ or ‘not dated’, and is used when the date of a publication is not known. If the date is known (for example, from another source), but not printed on the publication, give the date, but enclose it in square brackets.
‘n.p.’ means ‘no date’ or ‘not dated’, and is used when the date of a publication is not known. If the date is known (for example, from another source), but not printed on the publication, give the date, but enclose it in square brackets.
‘n.p.’ means ‘no place of publication’, and is used when the place of publication is not known. If the place is known from another source, again, put it in square brackets.
These abbreviations are most commonly required when you are dealing with books published before the twentieth century. The publication details of modern books are usually more standardized and much more comprehensive.
Bibliographies are sometimes sub-categorized so that, for example, there is a list of published books, a list of periodicals (such as journals and newspapers), a list of the private papers or manuscripts consulted and so on.
The two major citation systems
The short-title system and the author-date system have their origins in different areas of scholarship: the short-title system (also known as the humanities or documentary-note system) is traditional in arts and humanities or documentary-note system) is traditional in arts and humanities writing;
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