Recording Your Sources—the Bibliography
You will use a range of resources for your project, and need to be sure to record those sources in a bibliography.
In a bibliography, you list ALL the materials (provide citations) you looked at to prepare your project. If you looked at a book, TV show, Web site, etc., and you summarized any material from it, then you must include a reference in your bibliography.
Sometimes you may see a Bibliography referred to as “Works Cited” or a “Reference List.” These terms are used interchangeably. A Works Cited list is used to indicate the sources you have actually quoted—usually in an essay. Since you will probably not use quotes in your presentation, do not use the term Works Cited.
The proper format for a bibliography is alphabetical order by last names of authors, editors, translators, etc., or by first words of titles if the source has no stated author.
You can do this by hand or use one of the tools on the Internet, such as The Citation Machine.
You should use the MLA style for your bibliography. Click on this link to the Writer’s Style Guide for information on how to write your list. Examples are provided for various resource types in a bibliography.
Bibliography Summary
Once you have completed your research, you will have a series of note sheets that contain information on all your subtopics. You will also have the necessary bibliographic information ready to copy from rough to final copy in alphabetical order.
Completing a bibliography to hand in with your presentation will be easy if you have filled in ALL the information on your note sheets. Be sure that the FIRST thing you do when you find a resource is to write down the bibliographic information for the book, magazine, Web site, etc.
