“What ‘ingredients’ makes a good bibliography as it relates to a review of the literature on your major topic?”
A bibliography should include a range of sources. Anything missing from the categories below begs the question – did you do a thorough review of the literature on your topic?
First Step - Evaluate the Information you are finding
A. Source Type: What is "it" - book, periodical article, reference source, newspaper, blog, wiki, "gray literature", master’s thesis, correspondence, statistics, etc
B. Evaluate the information by the following criteria
Authority
Bias/Purpose
Currency
Accuracy
Coverage/Relevance
C. Scholarly vs Popular
D. How many times is your source cited by other researchers?
E. Journal Ranking – is the research published in widely respected journal
F. Primary vs Secondary sources
My Topic Example: Wastewater treatment and wetlands in Nigeria
In-class evaluation of sources for my annotated bibliography
1. http://www.krepublishers.com/02-Journals/JHE/JHE-31-0-000-10-Web/JHE-31-1-000-10-Abst-PDF/JHE-31-1-47-10-2012-Egun-N-K/JHE-31-1-47-10-2012-Egun-N-K-Tt.pdf
2. http://unstats.un.org/unsd/environment/wastewater.htm vs http://popplanet.org/PopPlanet/issue.cfm?countryid=2&iid=5
3. http://www.chemeng.lth.se/exjobb/E496.pdf
4. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-012370626-3.00056-9
5. http://www.ciaonet.org/wps/wwics10491/wwics10491.pdf
6. http://voyager.smcvt.edu/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=444036
Research - use the library subject guides and individual databases to research your topic:
CIAO
Greenfile
Google Scholar
Google Books
Skill Set
A. Can you “mine” an article’s work cited list for resources? When you find a good source, use the sources in that papers works cited list for your bibliography
- See Journal Finder
B. RefWorks - Use your RefWorks account to save, organize, and publish your sources in APA Style .