A good reference can disappear fast enough that you forget the details needed to reference it later. The book is returned to the shelf, you close the browser tab, or your database login session expires. You remember the point you want to reference, but don’t know which edition you read, who edited the collection, or what page the quote was on. Writing down the bibliographic information while you still have the source open saves you from searching for it again, and makes creating your final bibliography much simpler.
With a book, use the title page rather than the cover. Covers are made to attract attention and may abbreviate the book’s title, omit the subtitle, or draw attention to a series name. The title page generally contains the author or corporate author, the full book title, the subtitle, editor, translator, and sometimes the edition. Then move to the copyright page, which will include the publisher, place of publication, date of publication, edition, and ISBN. This page might look intimidating, but you don’t have to understand all the information immediately. Jot down any useful information you need in separate fields before trying to enter it into a citation.
With an article, you need to record the article’s title and author, but also the journal title, year of publication, volume, issue number, and page range. If the article has a DOI, make sure to record it along with the rest of the source information. If you downloaded a PDF of the article, note that the PDF itself may be page 1, while the article was published on pages 145-162 in the journal. Therefore, use the printed page numbers or those found in your database record, not the PDF viewer. For articles found online, the DOI is usually a more reliable link than the long URL from your database record.
Chapters from edited books can be confusing because you’re presented with two titles and two kinds of contributors. There is the chapter, which has its own author and title; and there is the book itself, which also has a title and possibly one or more editors. Both of these levels of authorship and title need to be recorded. You’ll want to include the chapter’s page range, any edition information for the book, and the book’s publisher. If you fail to capture these details, your bibliography may list the chapter’s author as the author of the whole book, or it may list the book title where the chapter title belongs.
If your source is online, make sure to check for important details before you save it. Note the page title, the website or collection name, the author of the page, the publication or last updated date, and the URL. Only record the date accessed if the citation style you’re using or the type of source you are citing requires it. Don’t substitute the day you accessed the page for a date of publication if one exists. The site’s owner may be a university, museum, government agency, or research institute, but that doesn’t mean it should be listed as the corporate author without further checking.
Keep your source data organized by using a simple table to track your sources. Each source gets its own row, with columns for the source type, author/creator, title, publication information, page range, identifier (DOI, ISBN, etc.), URL, date accessed, and notes. Leave the fields blank when information isn’t available rather than trying to guess at it. Once you’ve entered several sources into your table, you can compare your source information against a library catalog record or a citation created automatically in a database and see what details are missing before you try to assemble your final bibliography.
Do a quick final review before you close the source. Make sure you have the correct author names, confirm the titles you’ve entered are for the right level of the source (e.g. the article vs. the journal), verify the edition is what you actually read, and check that the page range is correct for the article or chapter rather than the whole book. It’s perfectly normal for your bibliography to improve slightly when you take the time to ensure your source records remain useful after you’ve finished using the source.
