Maintain a working bibliography - Managing information; taking notes responsibly - Research

Rules for writers, Tenth edition - Diana Hacker, Nancy Sommers 2021

Maintain a working bibliography
Managing information; taking notes responsibly
Research

✵ Information to collect for a working bibliography

✵ How to avoid plagiarizing from the web

✵ How to take notes responsibly

An effective researcher is a good record keeper. Whether you decide to keep records on paper or on a computer or mobile device, you will need methods for managing information: maintaining a working bibliography (see 52a), keeping track of source materials (see 52b), and taking notes without plagiarizing your sources (see 52c).

52a Maintain a working bibliography.

Keep a record of sources you read, listen to, or view. This record, called a working bibliography, will help you keep track of publication information for the sources you might use so that you can easily refer to them as you write and also compile a list of works cited. The box on the next page will guide you through what information is important to collect for your working bibliography. The format of this list depends on the documentation style you are using (for MLA style, see 57b; for APA style, see 62b). See 53d for advice on using your working bibliography as the basis for an annotated bibliography.

INFORMATION TO COLLECT FOR A WORKING BIBLIOGRAPHY

For an article

✵ All authors of the article

✵ Title and subtitle of the article

✵ Title of the journal, magazine, or newspaper

✵ Date; volume, issue, and page numbers

✵ Date you accessed the source (for an online source that lists no publication date)

For an article retrieved from a database (in addition to preceding information)

✵ Name of the database

✵ Accession number or other number assigned by the database

✵ Digital object identifier (DOI), if there is one

✵ URL of the database home page or of the journal’s home page, if there is no DOI

For a web source (including visual, audio, and multimedia sources)

✵ All authors, editors, or composers of the source

✵ Title and subtitle of the source

✵ Title of the longer work, if the source is contained in a longer work

✵ Title of the website

✵ Print publication information for the source, if available

✵ Online page or paragraph numbers or other retrieval information (such as a time stamp or slide number)

✵ Date of online publication or latest update

✵ Sponsor or publisher of the site

✵ Date you accessed the source (for an undated source)

✵ URL or permalink for the page on which the source appears

For an entire book

✵ All authors; any editors or translators

✵ Title and subtitle

✵ Edition, if not the first

✵ Publication information: city, publisher, and date

✵ Date you accessed the source (for an undated online book)