What is a Bibliography?

 Bibliographies are important tools for locating background information. A bibliography is an alphabetical listing of sources (books, articles, and other materials) provided by an author to document works used for research. By using the bibliographies of others, you can quickly develop a list of resources to use for your own research. Also known by the terms " works cited " or " references ", bibliographies are generally found at the end of most books, subject encyclopedia articles, and scholarly journal articles.

There are numerous book-length bibliographies on various topics located in the Arts & Sciences Libraries, each containing annotations or abstracts of the works cited. If you are interested in finding book-length bibliographies or learning how to locate books in the catalog that contain bibliographies, follow the example below.

Finding Bibliographies in the Catalog

Using the research topic "The My Lai Massacre of 1968 and its Impact on U.S. Involvement in the Vietnam War" , these examples show how to locate books that contain a bibliography, as well as any Vietnam War-specific bibliographies in book-length format.

In BISON search by keywords by typing "bibliography and Vietnam war and history".

The catalog retrieved a total of 65 titles that contain the keywords bibliography , Vietnam War, and history . Clicking on record # 3 , "American soldiers:" will show the complete catalog record of this book .

Book With a Bibliography

After clicking into the record #3 the full format of the record will display, giving such information as the location of the material and author. Scroll down to the section about the contents and notes.

Checking the Notes--as well as the contents--section of the record will indicate the location of the bibliographical references.