Is bibliography dead? Hell no!

Information Outlook, Nov, 2003 by Stephen Abram

Let's review the fundamental reason we do bibliographies: FISS. Find Information Stuff, Simply. The Web didn't change this in any fundamental way. You just can't start every learning or research exercise by diving willynilly into the entire corpus of the world's information--right? Someone who is an expert or knows a little more than you needs to review and select the best stuff, the most appropriate stuff, the properly targeted stuff. Librarians do this, teachers do this, professors do this, corporate trainers do this, editors do this--even Web page creators do this. It's a core skill of any profession to select and point to the right stuff that matches the content needs of target readers/learners/users at their literacy or learning readiness levels. It's one of the coolest competencies librarians have!

As a matter of fact, just released is the 15th edition (yes, print!) of the Chicago Manual of Style. Special 2003 editions of MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6th edition were released this year. The APAStyle.org website updates the 2001 edition of their guidelines. But the ol' undergrad standby, Kate Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 6th ed., 1996 somewhat presages a lot of the core Internet citation questions we encounter today.

When instructors tell us which style they want us, and our users to apply, we certainly get a plethora of opinions and answers. If they have no preference, we can follow these guidelines:

* APA: psychology, education, and other social sciences;

* MLA: literature, arts, and humanities;

* AMA: medicine, health, and biological sciences;

* Turabian: designed for college students to use with all subjects;

* Chicago: used with all subjects in the "real world" by books, magazines, newspapers, and other non-scholarly publications.

Otherwise, there seem to be strong opinions out there about this topic and you can never seem to guess how many permutations can occur. I suppose in a world where plagiarism is rumored to be rampant, and tools for "catching" plagiarists (and boosting originality according to their marketing materials) by Turnitin (http://www.turnitin.com) are doing well, emphasizing the source of your information is understandable.

Indeed, many of us use the word webliography to describe those Web-enabled bibliographies we create. Interestingly, ECollege.com claims the word Webliography as their Service Mark (SM). I sure hope this doesn't turn into one of those 'Listserv[TM]" tradename protection debacles!

In the new ProQuest interface, PQNext, we are able, as in some other professional search interfaces, to output our search results in correct citation format. The Auto Citation Style option lets you mark articles online, then automatically print, e-mail, or download a bibliography on the spot, perfectly, in your choice of citation styles:

* ProQuest Standard

* AMA

* APA

* Chicago: Author-Date

* Chicago: Humanities

* MLA

* Turabian

Advanced features include the ability to generate Instant Annotated Lists. Maybe you want to create a reading list for patrons, students, or your own later review? The "Print Bibliography" screen also features an "article summary" option that captures both the citation and abstract. This is ideal for supporting curriculum and classroom activities. Another nice feature allows for the creation of annotated Web pages that link easily to the full text, PDF, or image of the original articles.

Other bibliographic tools are already in our kit bags but we need to take another look at them. What we must remember is how things have changed technologically. In the past, bibliographies and footnotes were meant to document the course and point to the original source. Now we often have the ability to link directly to the original source. And we're not just able to link from the bibliography to text sources, articles, and the like; we can link to pictures, graphics, tables, streaming media, and more! These rich media enabled documents will emerge as one of the more interesting (and also somewhat unpredictable) developments of the digital world. This clearly reduces the "effort" distance between the cite and the site.

Our pathfinders can be now easily pointed right to the information we need instead of just randomly pointed. While some might say this is a symptom of our world's desire for instant gratification, I disagree. There is little value in the steps we take from resource to resource. Of course, some of us enjoy the journey--it's part of the research adventure--and some of our libraries are beautiful to explore! Then again, we're not like that army of rushed end-users trying to get their research done before deadline.

In the olden days, some thesis and dissertation advisors mandated the bibliographic style, but now many institutions are requiring candidates and students to use specific software packages to format their bibliographies and footnotes. These packages include such software as, EndNote (http://www.endnote.com/), ProCite (http://www.procite.com/), and Reference Manager (http://www.ref man.com/). Some allow for easy integration with reference checkers as well as with standard citation index and analysis tools. Some make it easy to submit material to key tools such as Dissertation Abstracts, tying documents together so they are accessible through other tools such as ISI. Use of specific software sets standards for institutions in creating local resource sites and databases of their research record.