Compiling a Working Bibliography

The working bibliography is a list of the sources you find as you go along
researching your paper. It will eventually evolve into the list of works cited that appears
at the end of the paper. Use either small index cards or a computer file for this purpose.
Enter the full information about each source, and then assign a number to the file.
When you take your notes, you may simply label them with the number of the source, to
prevent your having to write out all the information a second time.
Here’s the information you need:

BOOK
1. Author’s full name (last name first)
2. Full title (including any subtitle)
3. Edition (if the book is a second or later edition)
4. Number of the volume and the total number of volumes (if the book is a
multivolume work)
5. City of publication
6. Shortened form of the publisher’s name (This information is available in the new
MLA Handbook and online at the MLA Website
7. Year of publication

Moran, Reilly. Arf! It’s a Dog’s Life. Rev. ed. 3 vols.

Oxford: Clarendon. 2003.

ARTICLE IN A SCHOLARLY JOURNAL

1. Author’s name
2. Title of the article
3. Title of the journal
4. Volume number
5. Year of Publication
6. Inclusive page numbers of article (the number of the page on which the article
begins, a hyphen, and the number of the page on which the article ends)

Moran, Reilly. “Cats Think They’re So Great.” The Depauw

Review 41 (2003): 162-171.

NEWSPAPER OR MAGAZINE ARTICLE

1. Author’s name
2. Title of the article
3. Title of the periodical
4. Date of publication
5. Inclusive page numbers of the article

Moran, Reilly. “Advanced Chewing Techniques.” Chronicle

of Higher Canine Education 12 December 1993: A37-38.

INTERNET SOURCE
1. Author’s name
2. Title of the document
 3. Title of the scholarly project, database, periodical, or professional or personal site
4. Name of the editor of the scholarly project or database
5. Date of electronic publication or last update
6. Name of the institution or organization sponsoring or associated with the site
7. Date when you accessed the source
8. Network address, or URL

Moran, Reilly. “Dogs in Classical Greek Sculpture.” The Perseus Project. Ed. Gregory
Crane. March 1997. Tufts U.
14 May 2003 <http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Secondary/Sculptor_Essays/canis_toc.htm

In addition to the above information, you’ll find it useful to note the library call
number, or other identifying information required to locate the work. This will not be
included in your final bibliography, but it’s helpful during the research process.
Evaluating sources is one of the most crucial steps in doing research. These are
the criteria to keep in mind:
 Authorship and authority: Publications often list an author’s credentials in the
field by including relevant biographical information or a link to a home page.
Since many sites—including educational institutions (.edu) include papers written
by unsupervised students, you’ll want to be sure that you can trust the writer’s
scholarship.
 Accuracy and Verifiability: Check to see that a work’s sources are listed,
probably in a list of works cited. The titles in the list can indicate the breadth of
the author’s scholarship and may also reveal any possible bias.
 Currency: This is not as crucial for a literary paper as it would be for, say, a
scientific paper. Coleridge, for example, is considered one of the great literary
critics and is widely read today. Still, it’s wise to consult some current scholarship
to see how thinking has evolved on your subject

Start from day one

Including a full bibliography and appropriate references is an essential part of any dissertation or long essay
project. It is important to keep notes of what you read and the material you find useful as you go along. This
prevents you having to trace information about your sources at the last minute. It is very easy to forget key
information: for example, which edition was used?

Collect all the relevant information

Remembering to make a clear note of the sources you use and the information they contain is central to being
able to produce any assignment. For a dissertation it is even more important because you will probably be
consulting more sources than usual due to the length of the project. In addition to the bibliographic information
you need to note, it can also be helpful to note the location of your source. For example: Was it recommended
by a tutor? Did you find a reference to it in another source, either in the bibliography or mentioned in the
text? If you located it in a library, what classmark is given? – This can be helpful for identifying whereabouts
in the library you found it (to save time going to the different floors).
Have a system

Develop a system of storage that works for you. Additionally, be consistent with the details you note down and
if you are uncertain whether some information will be useful or not, make a note of it anyway. If perhaps the
date is missing or unclear, note this in full rather than just omitting that piece of information from your records.
Try and get used to using the format of the referencing system you are required to use (i.e. Chicago; Harvard;
MHRA; MLA).

.
A general note on capitalization and titles: Please note that all the principal words in the title of a published
work (this includes nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and subordinating conjunctions) must be
capitalized
. Please use a colon and a space to separate a title from a subtitle. This also applies when you cite the title in
your own written text:
“… in his book Surprised by Sin: The Reader in „Paradise Lost‟, Stanley Fish argues that there are parallels
between devilish temptation and the reading process.”

Publishing houses: Please indicate the names of publishing houses in the shortest possible form:
e.g. Oxford UP instead of ‘Oxford University Press’,
e.g. Lang instead of ‘Peter Lang Verlag der Wissenschaften’2

BOOKS
Last name, First name of author. Title of Book. Place of Publication: Publisher, Year of
Publication.
One author: Weitz, Eric. The Cambridge Introduction to Comedy. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009.
Two or three authors: Gillespie, Paula, and Neal Lerner. The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer
Tutoring. Boston: Allyn, 2000.
Book (anthology or collection) with an editor: Sterba, James P., ed. Morality in Practice. Stamford:
Wadsworth, 2001.

Beware: put ed. for one editor, eds. for multiple editors.

Rose, Shirley K., and Irwin Weiser, eds. The Writing Program Administrator as Researcher.
Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1999.

If there are more than three authors/editors, name only the first and add et al.:

Pailer, Gaby, et al., eds. Gender and Laughter: Comic Affirmation and Subversion in Traditional and
Modern Media. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009.

Please note: if you are citing a specific text from the collection, you must indicate exactly which of
the texts you have used. In this case, consult section 2 (Articles).

Scholarly Editions of classical texts with an author and an editor:

Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Ed. Kenneth Muir. London: Arden Shakespeare, 2001.

Please note that in this case, the name of the editor comes after the title.

The same happens if the text has been translated by someone.

Grass, Günter. The Tin Drum. Trans. Breon Mitchell. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2010.

Start with the name of the book if it is an anonymous publication:

New York Public Library Student's Desk Reference. New York: Prentice, 1993.

If your bibliography features several titles by the same author, use ---. You must list these titles in
chronological order.

Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008.

---. On Evil. New Haven: Yale UP, 2011.

ARTICLES

Article from a compilation (Sammelband): Last name, First name. "Title of Article." Title of Book.
Ed(s). Editor's Name(s). Place of Publication: Publisher, Year. Page range of entry.

Holmes, Frederick M. “Realism, Dreams and the Unconscious in the Novels of Kazuo Ishiguro.” The
Contemporary British Novel since 1980. Eds. James Acheson and Sarah C.E. Ross. Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. 11-22.

More than two articles from the same compilation:

Halberstam, Judith. “Skinflick: Posthuman Gender in Jonathan Demme‟s The Silence of the Lambs.”
Stryker and Whittle 574-583.
[This shortened reference will do, provided that there is a full separate bibliographical entry for the
compilation itself; in this case: the book edited by Stryker and Whittle.]

Definition or article from a reference book (e.g., dictionary, biography, encyclopedia):

Last name, First name. "Title of Article." Title of Reference Book. Number of edition, Vol. number.
Place of Publication: Publisher, Year. Page range of entry. Bergman, Peter G. “Relativity.”
Encyclopedia Britannica. 15th ed., Vol. 26. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1998. 501-508.

Sometimes, in a reference book the author‟s name is not given. In this case, place the title of the
reference book entry (in quotation marks) at the beginning, and follow the rest of the above instructions.

“Epic.” The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Politics. Eds. Alex Preminger and T. V. F.
Brogan. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993. 361-375.

Article in a scholarly journal:

Author(s). "Title of Article." Title of Journal Volume.Issue (Year): Page range of entry. Hinkle, Gerald,
and William R. Elliott. “Science Coverage in Three Newspapers and Three Supermarket Tabloids.”
Journalism Quarterly 66.2 (1989): 53-58.

Articles in newspapers and magazines: Author(s). "Title of Article." Title of Publication Date: Page
range of entry.

Kingsley, Patrick. “The New Age of Student Protest.” The Guardian 30 Nov. 2010: 12.
WEB PUBLICATIONS

You should always include a URL to make sure your source can be located. Provide the URL in exactly
the same way in which you see it in your Web browser. Do not insert any signs, e.g. a hyphen in order to
mark that the URL runs over more than one line. Rather, start a new line and provide the URL
unchanged.

Author(s). “Title of Web Site Component.” Title of Overall Web Site. Publisher/Sponsor responsible
for the Site (if not provided, put “n.p.”), Publication Date (if not provided, put “n.d.< URL>. Access
Date.

Hamid, Sarah, and Jack Raymond Baker. “Writing a Research Paper.” The OWL at Purdue. Purdue U
Online Writing Lab, 14 Apr. 2009.
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/resource/658/ 01 25 Nov. 2011.

“Grenada.” The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency, 6 July 2009.

https:// www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/gj.html> 17 Jan. 2012.

Clayborne, Carson. “About Martin Luther King, Jr.” The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and
Education Institute. Stanford U.
https://www.kinginstitute.info> 17 Jan. 2012.
Complete website:

Felluga, Dino. Guide to Literary and Critical Theory. Purdue University, 28 Nov. 2003.

https://cla.purdue.edu/academic/english/theory/ 17 Jan. 2012.

Online journals:
This applies to journals which are published exclusively on the web. Such sources are treated a bit
differently: Indicate that your source was published on the web, but cite it according to the rules for
printed journal articles (cf. section 2). Give page numbers if available

Author(s). “Title of Article.” Title of Online Journal Volume.Issue (Year): Page range if available.
Web. Access Date.

Bernstein, Mark. “10 Tips on Writing the Living Web.” A List Apart: For People Who Make Websites
149 (2002). Web. 25 Nov. 2011.