Table
of Contents
Looking
for Sources
Formatting
a Bibliography
Sample
Bibliographies: Good
and Bad
Appropriate Sources: In most cases, appropriate academic sources are described as "peer reviewed" materials. Peer reviewed works are books, journals, and web sites that control the quality of the published work. Usually, this means that the work is read and critiqued by editors who are either academics or experts in the field. In this class, you might consult industry journals published for professionals in the fields of architecture and design. These journals aren't published for academics, but they are peer reviewed because they are written by and for practicing (and therefore expert) architects.
Inappropriate Sources: Publications that are not acceptable as sources for an academic paper include popular magazines, newspapers, and unedited web pages. Examples of these sorts of things include Time Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, and personal or hobby web pages.
A Word on Encyclopedias: Encyclopedia Britannica is a good place to go if you have no idea how to start a paper. However, encyclopedias are not the greatest resource to use for in-depth, scholarly information. So, use them for an overview as you start your work if you want, but think carefully before using one as a source for the bulk of your information.
Sample Bibliographies: Click
here for A Good and A Not
So Good bibliography for a research paper.
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of Contents
There are many standardized ways to format a bibliography. Below are directions for using MLA style. If you use another style, like APA, this is fine as long as you are consistent with your use throughout your paper. These examples are taken from the Writing Tutorial Services Homage.
Works should be cited in alphabetical order by author, and should be double spaced.
Books
Citation entries for books generally list three main sections for information about your source:
1. author name:
last name first;
2. full title
of the work: book and journal titles are underlined or italicized; article
titles are put in quotation marks; and
3. publication
information: city of publication, name of publisher, and date.
Each of these sections is followed by a period and two spaces.
A Book by a Single Author:
Light, Paul C. Forging Legislation. New York: Norton, 1992.
Fairbanks, Carol. Prairie
Women: Images in American and
Canadian
Fiction. New Haven: Yale UP, 1986.
A Book by Two or More Persons:
Berry, Jason, Jonathan Foose,
and Tad Jones. Up from the
Cradle
of Jazz: New Orleans Music since World War II.
Athens:
U of Georgia P, 1986.
Note here that only the FIRST author's name is inverted; the rest in the list are in regular order.
A Work in an Anthology:
Since articles are only a part
of a larger work, you must also provide your reader with page numbers.
The numbers should be
for the whole article, not
just for the pages you have used.
Hansberry, Lorraine. A
Raisin in the Sun. Black Theater: A
20th
Century Collection of the Work of Its Best
Playwrights.
Ed. Lindsay Patterson. New York: Dodd,
1971.
221-76.
Note that the title of the play,
A Raisin in the Sun, is underlined or italicized (as all play titles
are), as is the title of the
anthology. "Works Cited" pages
follow regular rules of capitalization, underlining, and quotation marks
for titles.
Lazard, Naomi. "In Answer
to Your Query." The Norton Book
of Light Verse. Ed. Russell Baker. New York: Norton,
1986.
52-53.
An Article in a Scholarly Journal:
A journal that pages each issue separately (i.e., from issue to issue, the page number begins at 1):
Barthelme, Frederick.
"Architecture." Kansas Quarterly
13.3
(1981): 77-80.
Note that this entry provides
the volume number (13) and issue number (3) separated by a period and followed
by the year.
A journal
with continuous pagination (i.e., the numbers in one issue begin where
the preceding issue left off):
Brock, Dan W. "The Value
of Prolonging Human Life."
Philosophical
Studies 50 (1986): 401-26.
Note that this entry supplies the volume number (50) before the year.
Citing On Line Resources:
Writers should bear in mind
that standards for citing on-line sources are at this point not well established.
Two guides are
available on-line, however,
which are based on currently accepted styles for citing print documents.
<http://www.uvm.edu/~xli/reference/estyles.html>
"Bibliographic Formats for
Citing Electronic Information." by Xia
Li and Nancy B. Crane. (Includes
both APA- and MLA-based citation
styles.)
<http://www.cas.usf.edu/english/walker/mla.html>
MLA-Style Citations of Electronic
Sources, by Janice R. Walker.
A Good Bibliography (Note the formatting is correct, and that the sources are appropriate):
Kent, Cheryl. "Enlightenment
Below." Progressive Architecture
112.5 (1993)
: 60-65.
Lazard, Naomi. "In Answer
to Your Query." The Norton Book
of Light Verse. Ed. Russell Baker. New York: Norton,
1986.
52-53.
Scott Brown, Denise, Robert
Venturi, and Steven Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas.
Cambridge:
MIT Press, 1972.
A Not So Good Bibliography (Note the inconsistent formatting and the choice of research materials):
Annandale, Margaret, "Composing your Kitchen" Better Homes and Gardens." 112.5 (1987): 30-45.
Jones, Tom, "Architecture, Modern." Encyclopedia Britannica Ed. Bob Smith. New York: Britannica, 1982. 50-1.
Karen Smith, "Looking at Robert
Venturi" Time Magazine pg 115-119. July 14 1995.
<http://www.cas.sampledoc/~badchoice/html>
Bob's Hobby Homage on Big Buildings