Referencing sources

We are going to practice constructing references or citations from the metadata of a range of publications. This metadata can include details such as a place or year of publication or the name of the publisher. We are using three commonly used referencing systems, Harvard AGPS6, APA6th (the American Psychological Association) and Chicago 16th Footnotes. These are widely used systems, but it is important to recognise that they are far from being the only ones!

The golden rule when referencing is to find out which system your lecturer, supervisor or institution wants you to use, and then obtain the guide and follow it.

The general principles of referencing is common across most systems however: you need to organise the metadata into a sequence.

You will see a title page for each source. You need to cross match this information to two things:

• First, the referencing guide
• Second, the correct source type within the referencing guide (is it a book, an online book, an edited book, a journal article or a website?).

Referencing guides

Select the referencing style

Select the source type