Reference and bibliography - B.S. Warrier

                                  

To wrap up this multi-part series on thesis writing, here is an overview of how to list the bibliography and references.

 
FAMILIAR GROUND: Those who are familiar with the classification systems generally used in libraries will find the going easy.

"Classification, broadly defined, is the act of organising the universe of knowledge into some systematic order. It has been considered the most fundamental activity of the human mind."

— Lois Mai Chan (Expert on Library Science)

A bibliography is an alphabetical list of all the sources such as books, journal articles, or other materials from which you have derived information for your research and the preparation of the thesis. The citation has to be in a standard format. The listing is usually arranged by author, date or subject. There are accepted forms of citing authors, papers, and books in the bibliography part of your thesis. You have to follow them. Some of these are indicated below.

Books

When a book is cited, you should indicate the author's full name, full title, edition, number of the volume if it runs to two or more volumes, place of publication, publisher's name, and the year of publication. The author's name is reversed; the last name comes first, then a comma, then the first name, and a period after the complete name. Titles such as Dr, Sir, and Ph.D may be omitted. The title (name of the book) is underlined. The sequence for the publication can be as follows: place of publication, a colon, name of the publisher, a comma, and the date, and then a period.

Rao, Krishna. The future of floriculture in India. Bangalore: Pioneer, 2006.

If a book has been written by two or more authors, show their list in the same order as given on the title page. The name of the first author alone need be reversed; the other names may be given normally. If there are more than three authors, it is sufficient if you name only the first, and use ``et al'' to indicate the remaining authors. However, there is no harm in listing all the authors. In such a case, separate the names with commas and put an ampersand (&) before the last author.

Article in a journal

You should show the author's name, title of the article, title of the journal, volume number, year of publication, and page numbers. The title of the article may be shown in quotation marks. Put a period before closing the quotes. The name of the journal may be underlined. The year of the publication is given in parenthesis. It is followed by a colon, the inclusive page numbers and then a period.

Menon, Jayanth. "Women in management - a sociological study of women and their professional attainments in the IT industry." Sociology Today 32 (2006): 27-39.

Internet

Apart from information on author, and URL (uniform resource locator), the access details may be given. The sequence and style of citing have to be uniform. Never try to show in full the URL including the link wherefrom you retrieved the information. This may be too long and complicated leading to errors in transcription thereby spoiling its utility. The URL of the home page of the site would be adequate.

The following sequence may be followed.

· Author's name

· Title of document, in quotes

· Title of complete work (if relevant), in italics or underlined

· Date of publication / last revision

· URL, in angle brackets

· Date of access, in parentheses

See the example shown below.

Basu, Mohan. "The Music of the Ganga." The Bengal Heritage, 25 April 2005, {lt}http://www.tagore.edu.htm{gt} (16 October 2006).

If information about the print publication is given in the website, that may also be indicated.

It may be noted that only basic information on bibliography can be provided here because of space constraint. There are numerous possibilities of multiple authors, different works of the same author, journals that do not publish papers on continuous pages, articles from a newspaper / reference book / encyclopaedia / anthology, translations, audio / video records / CD ROMs, paintings, manuscripts, etc. There are reference books and websites that furnish full information on all these. A fine reference book that is generally followed is the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers by Joseph Gibaldi (The Modern Language Association of America. Reprinted by East-West, New Delhi).

Effective use of library

While using a library, it would be of great advantage to you if you were familiar with the style of classification adopted there. One popular style is the Dewey Decimal Classification System, in which the basic classification of titles is as follows:

000 Generalities

100 Philosophy & Psychology

200 Religion

300 Social sciences

400 Language

500 Natural sciences & mathematics

600 Technology (Applied sciences)

700 The arts

800 Literature & rhetoric

900 Geography & history

Further sub-classification has been made systematically. The full details cannot be covered here for space constraint. However, the following examples indicate the approach.

000 Generalities

001 Knowledge

002 The book

003 Systems

004 Data processing Computer science

005 Computer programming, programs, data

006 Special computer methods

010 Bibliography

064 General organisation & museology In France & Monaco

098 Prohibited works, forgeries, hoaxes

103 Dictionaries of philosophy

155 Differential & developmental psychology

222 Historical books of Old Testament

325 International migration & colonization

415 Structural systems (Grammar)

521 Celestial mechanics

672 Iron, steel, other iron alloys

798 Equestrian sports & animal racing

873 Latin epic poetry & fiction

959 General history of Asia Southeast Asia

Another popular system is Universal Decimal Classification that was developed by the Belgian bibliographers Paul Otlet and Henri la Fontaine at the end of the 19th century. It is based on the Dewey Decimal Classification, but is much more powerful and is used especially in specialist libraries.

In UDC, every number is thought of as a decimal fraction with the initial decimal point omitted, which determines the filing order. A great merit of UDC is that it is infinitely extensible. When new subdivisions are introduced, they would not disturb the existing allocation of numbers.

Main categories in UDC:

· 0 Generalities. Informatics and Information Sciences

· 1 Philosophy. Psychology

· 2 Religion. Theology

3 Social Sciences. Statistics. Politics. Government. Economics. Law.

Administration. Military. Folklore

· 4 Unassigned

· 5 Natural Sciences. Mathematics

· 6 Applied Sciences. Medicine. Technology

· 7 The Arts. Recreation. Entertainment. Music. Sports

· 8 Languages. Linguistics. Literature

· 91 Geography

· 92 (Auto-) Biography

· 93 / 99 History. Archaeology

The full version of the UDC has more than two lakhs of subdivisions.

Whatever is the system followed in a library, it will certainly be of great advantage to you if you get yourselves familiar with it, as otherwise a lot of time would be wasted in searching for the titles in the area of your choice.

It is true that modern libraries offer the facility for computerised search of the titles available at any point of time, based on author, subject, title, etc. Even then, knowledge of the classification system followed in your library will be of help.


Source:- The Hindu 
http://www.hindu.com/edu/2006/12/18/stories/2006121800240400.htm