A bibliography is a list of all the sources you used while researching a paper: books, articles, papers, and web pages. It usually comes at the end of your work, and you need it so that your readers, and you yourself, can see what your research is based on.
Citations: how to do them properly explains how to cite other authors' work when your tutor or professor has given you no guidelines. But a scientific paper or college essay is not complete without one more part: a collection of all your sources in one place. That part is the bibliography.
What is a bibliography?
Put simply, a bibliography is a list of the sources you used in the research for your work. They include books, chapters, articles, papers, essays, and even web pages. The bibliography is usually found at the end of your work and gives an overview of all the material you cited and used in your paper.
What sets a bibliography apart from a reference list is that it contains all the reading and research material you used for your work, not only the works you cited. Did you read something that you only mention briefly in your paper, or that did not make it in because other work was more relevant? It still has its rightful place in the bibliography.
What should a bibliography contain?
Some departments and lecturers have guidelines for how a bibliography entry should look. If you have a guide like this, follow it. If not, make sure that every entry includes at least the following:
- The name of the author or authors
- The title of the work
- The date the work was published
- The publisher (and, in some citation styles, the place of publication)
Some types of sources need more information:
| Type of source | Also include |
|---|---|
| A book | The volume number, if the book is part of a series; the chapter number, if only one chapter was relevant; the name of the book's editor, if the author you cite wrote only that chapter |
| A magazine or journal article | The title of the magazine or journal, and the volume and issue the article appeared in |
| A web source | The URL, and often the date you last accessed it |
Why do I need a bibliography?
The easy answer is that a bibliography is required for many research papers, essays, and other term papers. But there are also good reasons to include one even when nobody asks for it.
The first reason is the reader. When your lecturer, your colleagues, or your critics read a paper on a new topic, especially a controversial one, they want to know which earlier work your research builds on. For a reader who knows the field, a quick look at the bibliography shows how deep and reliable your research is. A bibliography with important names and recent work in your field makes a much better impression than one full of outdated and little-known material.
A student or another interested reader can also look at your bibliography to find out whether your paper is worth reading, or even essential for their own research. If they are writing about one of the authors in your bibliography, your work may matter for their paper as well.
Of course, a bibliography helps you, too. Did you come across a great article for your paper, but you aren't sure whether you have already included it? Check your bibliography. If you have already used other works by the same author, the new source is probably worth a read. In general, the bibliography is a quick way to check which material you have used and which articles you still need.
The annotated bibliography
Another form of bibliography is the annotated bibliography. For each source, an annotated bibliography adds more information about it, such as:
- An abstract or summary of its content
- A note about the quality of the material
- A note about how useful the source was for your work
Listing your sources carefully is also part of avoiding plagiarism.