School of Information Management & Systems.   Spring 2003.
245 Organization of Information in Collections.   M. Buckland.

Bibliographic style .

There are two really important rules: Enough information must be supplied to identify the source unambiguously and the description provided must be accurate. Also consistency is desirable.

Books: Include at least: author/main entry, title, publisher, place, date; more generously add: subtitle, series, vols or pagination.

Articles in periodicals: Include at least: author, journal title, volume number, year, pages; more generously: article title and issue number.

Practice varies between publishers and between disciplines. Publishers require adherence to their "house style" concerning exact details of presentation: Spell out forenames, invert forenames/initials of second author, italicise title, punctuation, &c. Journals usually print "Instructions to authors" regularly; look at some recent issues to identify required style. For books examine examples of publisher's books and ask for guidelines.

Best general guide is The Chicago Manual of Style. 14th ed. 1993. 900 pages of detailed guidance on many aspects of writing and book production: punctuation, proof-reading, indexes, spelling, capitalizing, and much more.

Note increasing use of "author-date" style: Cite reference in text by mentioning authors name and year of publication, e.g. "Previous theories (Morton 1965; Sanchez 1976) were disproved by Jones (1987)." List of references contains year of publication following authors name:
Morton, J. 1965. A Theory of Style. Oakland: Duncan.

Information not derived from the document is usually supplied in [square brackets].

See The Chicago Manual of Style for examples.

Information found on the Internet and at World Wide Web sites: Specify the address (location), the title, and the date and time seen (and, if known, the date posted). See The Columbia Guide to Online Style by Janice R. Walker and Todd Taylor (Columbia UP, 1998). Summarized at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/cgos/idx_basic.html   recommends two options:

Humanities Style:
Author's Last Name, First Name. "Title of Document." Title of Complete Work [if applicable]. Version or File Number [if applicable]. Document date or date of last revision [if different from access date]. Protocol and address, access path or directories (date of access).

Scientific Style:
Author's Last Name, Initial(s). (Date of document [if different from date accessed)]. Title of document. Title of complete work [if applicable]. Version or File number [if applicable]. (Edition or revision [if applicable]). Protocol and address, access path, or directories (date of access).

Sides, Charles. 1991. How to write and present technical information. Oryx. ENGIN T11.S528 1991
Weiss, Edmond H. 1991. How to write usable user documentation. 2nd ed. Oryx. ENGIN QA76.165 W44 1991 (1st ed. in MAIN)