A bibliography is a way of listing all the sources that you have cited in a academic document, it is so that the reader of the article can search up on the facts you have used to allow them to find out more about what you have written and the ideas that you have used to form your own opinion or fact.
There are different ways of referencing any types of sources like internet sites, magazine articles and books, mainly the key parts of a bibliography for a book as an example is the name of the book the name of the author of the book, the date it was published and the publisher it was released with. Other sources such as internet pages go a bit differently as you need to put down the site name and how long ago you accessed the the site to research your chosen article.
An example of using a bibliography to cite an internet site would be linked like this;
wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove. Date of access 30/04/2011
Disclaimer :
Wikipedia is by no means a good place to find academically sound material, I am just using the site here as an example of how to add sites to a bibliography page.
So here we can see the link to the site that I may of used for research and the date of the last time I accessed the page. The date is mainly to help because the site page could always be updated with different information or the page could be taken down for any number of reasons.
Books are cited in much more detail compared to internet sites, the author and the publisher are both credited in the bibliography and the date the book was published is added as well, an example of a book reference would look like this;
There is a lot more information on the writer and the publisher, a book in reference to an internet site is harder to make a quick check up on, however the information that is on the bibliography should make it quite easy for the reader to look up these books that was cited on the document.
There must also be credit when you quote people in academic documents, this is to let the reader know who you are quoting from and where they can get the quote from in the citations provided. This allows easier understanding of how you may of came to the points you did in the document or paragraph because the reader has a direct link to the book or site you got it from and the direct page.
For example, Nick Cowen's first paragraphs about portal 2 are quite interesting, he does not start his review on portal 2 however he does start to talk about, “the history of art and entertainment”. He talks about how, “if you habitually make genius look easy, audiences and critics will round on you if you stumble, even more viciously than they would have done if your track record was of a mediocre quality. Valve's winning streak has to get snapped at some point, doesn't it? And if it does, the knives will be out in force.”(Nick Cowen:2011)
Though the quote is from a site and not a journal, the point is that now that the viewer knows that this comment was made by Nick Cowen it will be much easier to look at the bibliography to find the actual document I have used the quote from.
Bibliography's are important in the academic system because they allow people to see how you came up with the thought or idea you came too. By not citing someone in your document if you quoted or used there work is stealing. But apart from that citing sources backs up your idea because most importantly it allows people too see how you came to your point or idea using the information available.
And knowing is half the battle.
Bibliography
Nick Cowen.Portal 2 review
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2011/apr/19/portal-2-game-review date of last access: 30/04.2011
wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove. Date of access 30/04/2011
Philip K Dick.1968.Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.Doubleday
