What Does Bibliography Mean
We explain what a bibliography is, its elements, characteristics and examples. In addition, the main bibliographic styles.
What is the bibliography?
In the academic or school environment, the bibliography is the organization, classification and description of the documents and informative sources that nourished a determined investigation , that is to say, of all that material that has been consulted in the preparation of a monograph or a research work of any kind. It is also known as bibliographic references .
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When researching and generating knowledge , it is important to be as responsible and ethical as possible. This means that we must provide all the necessary information , since the bibliography allows the reader :
- They can check where the data , ideas or references that we incorporate into our work come from and that are not of our exclusive imagination.
- Can you reproduce the trajectory of our research and check the logic behind it.
- You can go to the original sources behind our work, in case you are interested in investigating the subject .
This section is usually found at the end of all documents or texts , so that it is reached once the investigation has been read, or it is accessed directly, knowing where it is.
For its formulation, methodological or bibliographic norms are generally followed , which determine what information to reference and in what specific way. A good bibliography assigns an entry to each source consulted, even when they are by the same author or have common features.
Finally, although its name indicates that it refers to books and written documents (the word comes from the Greek biblion , "book", and graphein , "writing"), this section should include any type of information source consulted in our work : books, magazines and monographs, but also films, recordings, web pages , etc.
See also: Elements of a monograph
Elements of the bibliography
Every bibliography comprises a diverse set of elements, depending on what type of source we are dealing with. In other words, the exact same elements are not required to refer to a book, equipped with an author and editors, as a film, equipped with a director and producers, or a web page that has several possible authors.
However, the logic behind the reference is usually always the same, and always contemplates the following main elements:
- Author's name. We must indicate to whom the books or documents consulted belong, that is, to whom they are attributed. In the case of films, we will go to the director and / or producer, or to the corresponding data according to the nature of the source.
- Full title. Logically, an author or producer can have many works in his charge, so we must specify which of them we refer to in each case, placing the full title as appropriate.
- Year of publication. This is not a minor fact: the same book may have several editions in different years, or an author may have later regretted what was said in a conference. In some cases, such as web pages, we must refer to the date of retrieval of the information, that is, when we entered the web page, since many are not always online.
- Responsible for the publication. In this section, those responsible for the publication of the source would go, who may or may not be the authors themselves. For example, a book is written by its author, but published by its publishers. A film is directed by its director, but released by its producers.
- Place of appearance. This is not always valid, since things online don't really have a place; but physical objects do have a place of production, that is, where they were made or published. This data is usually referred to with the name of the city , the country, or sometimes with both.
Main bibliographic styles
As we said before, there are many bibliographic styles, that is, many methods to develop a bibliography. Generally, each method responds to the interests of a sector of knowledge or academic activity, which organizes the information on the basis of what is usually of importance for their studies. Thus, the main styles used today are:
- APA style. Developed in 1929 by the American Psychological Association (APA, its acronym in English), it is a standard intended for research in the field of social sciences and sciences of behavior . Its most current version dates from 2020, and it is one of the most used styles in the world and most preferred by university institutions.
- MLA style. Created by the Modern Languages Association of the United States (MLA) in 1977, it is especially aimed at research in humanistic areas, such as philosophy , literature , arts and also cultural studies. Its most recent version dates from 2016, when its MLA Handbook was discontinued .
- Harvard style. This is the name given to the tendency to summarize, in the bibliographic references within the research text, the source data (names, year and page number), directly after the cited text, leaving the rest of the data in the bibliography . In that sense, the APA style would be very similar to Harvard. Its name obviously comes from the homonymous American university.
- ISO 690 style. In this case, it is a standard from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO, its acronym in English), designed to refer to printed or non-printed materials, such as magazines and monographs or parts of them. In this regard, four successive ISO standards have been issued to date : 1975, 1987, 2010 and 2013.
Characteristics of a bibliographic reference
In general, all bibliographic references are characterized by being:
- Concrete and concise. That is to say, it goes to the point and includes only the necessary information, according to its methodological style, without redundancies or ramblings.
- Formal, thorough and reliable. That is, without ignoring important data, or falsifying information, or confusing similar information.
- Summarized or whole. Depending on whether it is within the text of the research (in that case it is summarized) or in the final section of the bibliography (in that case it is complete).
Bibliography examples
As an example, you will find below a couple of bibliography entries in different methodological styles:
- APA style :
- Arébalo, M. (1998). The secret life of worms . Madrid: Animal editions.
- Goliander, S., Gómes, F. and others (2009). "Probabilistic study on the early mating of Aedes aegipti as a result of the increase in temperature in the Congo". Pan-African Journal of Infectology , Vol. 12, pp. 20-45.
- MLA style :
- Citizen Kane . Dir. Wells, Orson. RKO Pictures, 1941. Film.
- Douglas, Michael. The impossible genealogy . A study in the shadow of multiculturalism . Buenos Aires: Laika editores, 2009. Printed.