Laura-Jayne Beattie, third year Law School student and Law Library Student Aide, has some top tips to help you find help with OSCOLA.
Need help with OSCOLA? Hate hearing this word? Then look no further than here and fear no more, as below I’ve summed up the best places for help with the bane of most Newcastle Law Student’s lives!
Listed below are resources available to help you master the OSCOLA referencing system. Some you may never have heard of, but all are there to ease you through the tricky issues you may face with referencing.
Law Library Staff
With super friendly staff available weekdays, and Stage 3 Student Aides on shift every evening and weekend, what more could you want? Please don’t feel afraid of coming to speak to us, we’re really not that scary (even though we may look it)!
Guides
The guides below are your first point-of-call (click on the links). However, there are sometimes particularly awkward sources. So, if the guides are confusing you or you can’t find the type of source you’re trying to reference within them, we’ll help you use them effectively to find what you need. Just show us what you’re wanting to reference, and we’ll try our very best to help you cite it right!
The Library’s guide on Managing Resources: OSCOLA: This is a good starting point for all things OSCOLA. Here you’ll find tips and links to guides and tutorials.
A-Z guide: A hidden gem of library resources, listing many types primary and secondary sources in alphabetical order. Each type is hyperlinked, and when you click on it a general overview of how to cite that source and a few examples appear.
OSCOLA (4th edition) resources full guide: A very detailed 55-page document, listing all types of sources (except for most international ones) and giving examples of how to cite sources throughout.
Quick Reference guide: An A4 document of how to cite the most common types of sources. A good document to print out and keep somewhere safe so you can always refer back to it!
OSCOLA 2006: Citing International Law guide: This is a separate guide, specifically for citing international law sources. From international treaties, to UN documents, it has it all!
Hopefully this has all helped in some way. But just remember if you’re struggling to cite something, don’t cite it wrongly or remove it from your essay and pretend it never existed! Get help from the super easy resources above!