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English
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The preliminary (or working) bibliography is a collection of sources gathered early in the research process that seem mainly from titles as if they will be relevant to the topic. Keeping a more or less formal record of your sources has the advantage of giving you practice at writing the bibliographical entries that will appear as part of your works cited page, a page derived from your preliminary bibliography on which you list only the sources you actually cite in the paper. For English 112 you will be asked to compile an annotated working bibliography: a list of works in conventional bibliographical form accompanied by brief but specific summaries of the contents (3-4 sentences in most cases).
For information on how to write bibliographical entries, see Keys (166-94), since you will be using the MLA style for English 112. (Remember, however, that Keys includes other styles in subsequent appendices--Chicago and APA, for instance--that you may be asked to use in other classes in your college career.) Pay particular attention to three basic forms: books, periodicals, and electronic sources. In each bibliographical item, every line but the first one should be indented, and all items should be in alphabetical order.
Books: Keys 12C. Variations of that basic form are explained on following pages.
Periodicals:
1. Periodicals paged anew in each issue: Keys 12d (item 22). This is the form to use for general, popular periodicals or magazines such as Sports Illustrated, Redbook, and the news weeklies like Time and Newsweek. They are described as being paged anew in each issue because every issue starts with page 1. An issue is a single copy, and a volume usually consists of the issues that appear within a calendar year. The second issue of US News and World Report for the 1996 volume, for instance, begins with page 1, just as the first issue and all subsequent issues in the volume do. This may seem too obvious to be mentioned--until you read about the second type of periodical.
2. Periodicals paged continuously throughout the volume: Keys 12d (item 20). Most scholarly periodicals and learned journals fall into this category. If, as in the quarterly The American Scholar, for instance, there are four issues per year, then the second issue (say, for summer) does not begin with page 1, but with the number of the page following the last page of the preceding issue. If the last page of the spring issue is, say, 195, then the number of the first page of the summer issue will be 196, and so on throughout the volume. It is that practice that leads to the main differences between the two types of periodical entries: for periodicals paged continuously throughout the volume, you include the volume number and the year in parentheses. That is all that is needed since the specific page numbers will allow readers to find the article with ease and precision. For periodicals paged anew in each issue, you need to give the specific date and not the volume number, along with the page numbers.
3. There is one special case you may need to know about: Keys 12 (item 21). There are some scholarly periodicals that are paged anew in each issue. When you cite an article from such a periodical, you need to include the issue number, as well as the volume number, with the volume first and the issue following a period: 14.3.
Electronic sources: Keys 12e-f.
1. For citing Web pages, the elements that are most important are the name(s) of the author(s) (if the item is "signed"), the title of the page, the date of creation or latest revision (if included on the page), the comprehensive name of the site itself or source (or sponsor) of the page, the date on which you had access to the site, and the URL in angle brackets. Unfortunately, much variety should be expected. The first example below is anonymous; the second is both anonymous and undated:
"Understanding Post-Flight Fainting." Space Daily 14 July 2000. 17 Jan. 2001.
<http://www.spacedaily.com/news/spacemedicine-00f.html>.
"Microgravity: Traveling Exhibits." Research Program Office, Marshall Space Flight Center.
NASA. 17 Jan. 2001. <http://microgravity.nasa.gov/exhibit.html>.
2. For citing electronic databases, see Keys 12e.
3. For citing periodical articles that you read within the ProQuest Direct or EbscoHost databases, use the following form:
Goh, David S., Connie Primavera, and Georgine Bartalini. "Risk Behavior, Self-Efficacy,
and AIDS Prevention among Adolescents." Journal of Psychology, Interdisciplinary
and Applied 130 (1996): 537-47. Research Library. ProQuest. Renfro LIbrary, Mars
Hill College. 17 Jan. 2001. [In this case, there is no need for the URL for the search
screen because only registered users can use it.]
Remember to indent every line but the first in bibliographical entries.
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