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Referencing Styles

There are lots of different styles – which one will you choose?

Once you start creating citations and references, you need to consider referencing styles. There are hundreds of them out there and each has a slightly different set of rules about how citations and reference lists should appear in your text.

Most Newcastle University students use the Harvard at Newcastle style, but there is also Vancouver, IEEE, OSCOLA and many, many more. Your lecturers will expect you to use one specific type and all your citations and references should match that style accurately and consistently; same punctuation, same capitalisation, same everything. 

We have lots of help about using some of the popular referencing styles in our Managing Information guide:  https://libguides.ncl.ac.uk/managing/referencing_styles

 

 

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Referencing: why bother?

When you are writing a piece of work and you use someone else’s thoughts, words or ideas, you must reference them. But why do we talk about referencing so much at University, and why is it so important? Why should you bother spending time on ensuring that your references are consistent, accurate and correct?

It all comes down to why we reference in the first place.

  • To make your contribution clear by showing which words and ideas are yours, and which have come from your reading.
  • To acknowledge the work of others and how you have built on the knowledge you’ve gained from your reading.
  • To ensure that the reader can follow up on your references for themselves.
  • To avoid being wrongly accused of plagiarism.

Watch our short video to find out a little more about why we should bother with referencing.

Find out more on our Managing Information skills guide.

 

 

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Recipe for Referencing

recipe for referencing promotion image

What are the key ingredients to a successful recipe for referencing? Of all the enquiries we get in the Library, referencing is the most common.

Referencing is the acknowledgement of the sources that you use in your work. You must reference all sources that you use in your assignment, project or dissertation, including words and ideas, facts, images, videos, audio, websites, statistics, diagrams and data.

Over the next two weeks weeks we’re focusing on referencing, giving you the recipe for success. As a novice referencing baker, you might need a little help to understand the ingredients and methods for your referencing style.

We’ll tell you where to get advice and help

Understand why we reference and how

How to avoid plagiarism

How to manage your information to make your life easier and assignments less stressful, giving you the recipe for success.

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New resource in focus: Rock’s backpages

Rocks back pages logo

We’re looking in more depth at some of the great new online resources we’ve bought recently, to help you get the best out of them.

Rock’s Backpages is an online archive of music journalism, containing over 37,000 articles from the 1950s to the present, including reviews, interviews, letters and features, plus 500 audio interviews.

It covers a wide range of artists and genres: from Aaliyah to ZZ Top; from BB King to PP Arnold; from 10CC to 999; and from The Rezillos all the way to….. The Revillos. Hold tight!

Articles are taken from music publications around the world, such as NME, Rolling Stone, Smash Hits, The Face and Mojo, together with music articles from non-music magazines and newspapers. You can read the work of writers such as Lester Bangs, David Hepworth, Nick Kent, Jon Savage, Caitlin Moran and many more.

Hot tip! Choose Advanced search or Library for a full range of search/browse options, including by genre, artist, journalist or publication. If you want to read the first reviews of The Beatles, analyse how LGBT issues have been handled over the years, or explore Chrissie Hynde’s early years as an NME journalist, you can do it here.

New content is added to Rock’s Backpages every week, and highlighted on the home page. Follow them on Twitter to keep up to date, or listen to the weekly podcast which highlights the latest additions.

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To google or not to google?…That is the question

Can you remember life before Google?! It is such a huge part of our lives, that even those of us who can remember a time before it (hmmm, yes I am that old!), can’t imagine life without it now. It is great place to find the latest cinema listings or who won last night’s football match, but what about finding information for your latest assignment or research?

There is a time and a place to use Google, but you need to be aware of its limitations. Google, after all, is a business. It earns the majority of its money from advertising, and it will not reveal how it ranks its search results (every wonder how Wikipedia always appears at the top of every search you do?). A search that we do today and repeat tomorrow for a piece of research could give us hugely different results, with no explanation of why. We are also often bombarded with millions of search results and the reality of our searching habits mean that we rarely look beyond the first or second page.  Admittedly, advanced search features on Google and the use of Google Scholar can really help us to become a smarter and effective Google users, but is it enough for our own research? Are we finding everything that is out there?

We need to think about our information needs before we work out where it will be best for us to search. Imagine, for a moment, that we are want to buy a particular local cheese, which we love. Would we go to a general shop or would we go to a specialist deli? We are probably going to need to go to a deli. It is just the same when searching for information. Google may be great for some background information or a starting point of a project, but it may simply not give us the high quality, niche information that we need to give us top marks for an assignment. So what are the other options?

Aimee Cook, a Liaison Librarian here at Newcastle University, explains more.

So next time you think about googling something for an assignment, stop and check out Library Search and your subject guide first for the books, eBooks and specialist databases that are available to you. If you are going to use Google, make use of the advanced search features and get to grips with Google Scholar. Happy searching!

Photo by Emily Morter on Unsplash

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Resource in Focus: historic newspapers in Gale Primary Sources

We have access to a wide range of digitised British historic newspaper archives, which you can access through various different platforms (see the historic section of our newspaper resource guide for more detail). If you want to search across many historic newspapers at once, we would recommend using Gale Primary Sources.

Gale Primary Sources searches across 15 different archives, including major titles such as The Times, The Daily Mail, Financial Times and The Economist (all dating from their very first issue) together with historic collections of regional titles. You can select to search as many of the archives as you require.

Watch this short introductory video to help you get the best out of searching Gale Primary Sources. If you want information on how to access current, business and international news, then visit this page.

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Finding international news: a how to guide

The Library’s online news resources are strongest for the UK, but we do also provide access to a wide range of historic and contemporary international news resources. You can find links to all relevant resources in the international section of our newspaper guide.

Historic archives

Our strongest non-UK historic resources are from the USA, as we have access to the New York Times archive, together with various archives from the Civil War period, plus a collection of microfilms from the Civil Rights period. The availability of historic newspaper archives depends very much on digitisation programmes in the country concerned. We have included links to those which are freely available (and be sure to investigate the Europeana newspaper project, which aims to aggregate millions of newspaper pages across many European countries.)

Contemporary news

Nearly all international newspapers have their own web site, but you are unlikely to find free access to their entire archive. However, the Nexis database enables you to search across thousands of newspapers, news magazines and newswires from across the world (though primarily Europe and the USA), dating back over twenty years to the present day (precise date coverage varies by title). You can search in various ways, by country, language, or search an individual newspaper. Watch the video below to find out how to use this fantastic resource.

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Books added to the Library by students in GPS (Semester Two 2017/18)

We have a service called “Books on Time” for students. This allows you to tell us about the books you need for your studies. If we don’t have the books you need, simply complete the web form and we’ll see if we can buy them. For books we already have in stock, if they are out on loan please make a reservation/hold request using Library Search.

Further information about Books on Time

In Semester two, academic year 2017/2018 we bought the following items after requests from students in GPS.

There were 104 requests from 54 students totaling £4760.50 (60% of requests from undergraduates, 12% from Postgraduate taught and 28% from Postgraduate Research)

 

Title Now in stock
A Decade of Dark Humor: How Comedy, Irony and Satire Shaped Post-9/11 America 1xlong
A Life in Trans Activism 1xlong
A People Stronger: The Collectivisation of MSM and TG Groups in India 1xlong
A People’s Peace in Cyprus: Testing Public Opinion on the Options for a Comprehensive Settlement 1xlong
Affect, Space and Animals (Routledge Human-Animal Studies Series) 1xlong
African religions and philosophy 1xlong
Age Studies A Sociological Examination of How We Age and are Aged Through the Life Course 1xlong
Age, Gender and Sexuality Through the Life Course: The Girl in Time 1xlong
Aged by Culture 1xlong
Animal Geographies: Place, Politics and Identity in the Nature-culture Borderlands 1xlong
Animal Oppression and Human Violence: Domesecration, Capitalism, and Global Conflict (Critical Perspectives on Animals: Theory, Culture, Science and Law) 1xlong
Animal Revolution: Changing Attitudes Towards Speciesism 1xlong
Animal Rights/Human Rights: Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation (Critical Media Studies: Institutions, Politics, and Culture) 1xlong
Before birth: understanding prenatal screening 1xlong
Café Society 1xlong
Celebrity Humanitarianism and North-South Relations 1xlong
Children’s Emotions in Policy and Practice 1xlong
Criminal Love? Queer Theory, Culture and Politics in India 1xlong
Critical Realism: An Introduction to Roy Bhaskar’s Philosophy 1xlong, 1xebook
Culture and Politics: A Reader 6xlong, 1xstc
Cyprus: A Conflict at the Crossroads 1xlong
Debates in values-based practice: arguments for and against 1xlong
Different Faces of Attachment: Cultural Variations on a Universal Human Need 1xlong
Disrupting homelessness. 1xlong
Domestic Animals, Humans, and Leisure: Rights, Welfare, and Wellbeing (Routledge Research in the Ethics of Tourism Series) 1xlong
Emotions and Social Relations 1xlong
Expatriate identities in postcolonial organizations: working whiteness 1xlong
Exploring Parliament 1xlong
Feminism and Families 1xlong
Foucault Beyond Foucault: Power and its Intensifications Since 1984 2xlong
Gendered Bodies: Feminist Perspectives 1xlong
Global Homophobia: States Movements and the Politics of Oppression 1xlong
Guns Don’t Kill People, People Kill People: And Other Myths About Gun Control 1xlong
Handbook of Environmental Economics 1xlong
Hijras, the Labelled Deviants 1xlong
How Europeans View and Evaluate Democracy 1xlong
Human and Other Animals: Critical Perspectives 1xlong
Identity and Social Change 1xlong
Imagining the Modern: The Cultures of Nationalism in Cyprus 1xlong
Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, Mississippi 1xlong
Justice for Laughing Boy: Connor Sparrowhawk – A Death by Indifference 1xlong
Laughing Matters: Humor and American Politics in the Media Age 1xlong
Let Africa Lead 1xlong
Local Agency and Peacebuilding: EU and International Engagement in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Cyprus and South Africa 1xlong
Loneliness and its Opposties: Sex, Disability and the Ethics of Engagement 1xlong
Made in India: Decolonizations, Queer Sexualities, Trans/National Projects 1xlong
Markets of Dispossession NGOs, Economic Development and the State in Cairo 1xlong
Masculinities in Transition 1xlong, 1xebook
Me Hijra, Me Laxmi 1xlong
Media and the Riots: A Call to Action 1xlong
Minority Women and Austerity: Survival and Resistance in France and Britain 1xlong
Muslim Spaces of Hope: Geographies of Possibility in Britain and the West 1xlong
Nationbuilding, Gender and War Crimes in South Asia 1xlong
Negotiating Europe: Europeanness Since the 1950s 1xlong
Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its Enemies 1xlong
On What Matters: Volume 1 1xlong
Placing Animals: An Introduction To The Geography Of Human-Animal Relations (Human Geography In The Twenty-First Century: Issues And Applications) 1xlong
Poverty and Social Exclusion in the UK, Volume 2: The Dimensions of Disadvantage 1xlong
Poverty Propaganda 1xlong
Prostitution, Harm and Gender Inequality 1xlong
Race and the Yugoslav Region: Postsocialist, Post-Conflict, Post-Colonial? 1xlong
Regarding Animals (Animals Culture And Society) 1xlong
Re-Imagining North Korea in International Politics 1xlong
Religion Matters 1xlong
Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi 1xlong
Smart Green Cities: Towards a Carbon Neutral World 1xlong
Snow and Ice-Related Hazards, Risks and Disasters 1xlong
Social Lives With Other Animals: Tales of Sex, Death and Love 1xlong
Social Mobility for the 21st Century: Everyone a Winner? 2xlong
Sport and Postcolonialism 1xlong, 1xebook
Switzerland and the European Union: a close, contradictory and misunderstood relationship 1xlong
The Changing Nature of the Graduate Labour Market: Media, Policy and Political Discourses in the UK 1xlong
The Concept of Race in South Asia 1xlong
The Cyprus Referendum: A Divided Island and the Challenge of the Annan Plan 1xlong
The Disability Studies Reader 2016 1xlong
The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery 1xlong
The European Union and Africa: The Restructuring of North-South Relations 1xlong
The European Union and Africa: The Restructuring of North-South Relations 1xebook
The Geopolitics of Emotion: How Cultures of Fear, Humiliation and Hope are Reshaping the World 1xlong
The Intimate Lives of Disabled People 1xlong
The Moral Economists: R. H. Tawney, Karl Polanyi, E. P. Thompson, and the Critique of Capitalism 1xlong
The Myrdalsjokull Ice Cap: Glacial Processes, Sediments and Landforms on an Active Volcano 1xebook
The New Oxford Handbook of Economic Geography 1xebook
The New Social Mobility: How the Politicians Got It Wrong 1xlong
The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It 1xlong
The Public Shaping of Medical Research: Patient Associations 1xlong
The Retreat of Western Liberalism 1xlong
The Routledge Handbook of European Security 1xlong
The Truth About Me: A Hijra Life Story 1xlong
The Violence of Austerity 1xlong
Tourism and Animal Ethics (Contemporary Geographies of Leisure, Tourism and Mobility) 1xlong
Tourism, Power and Culture: Anthropological Insights 1xlong
Transitions to Adulthood Through Recession: Youth and Inequality in a European Comparative Perspective 1xlong
Transnational Migration and Home in Older Age 1xlong
Trust in International Cooperation: International Security Institutions, Domestic Politics and American Multilateralism 1xlong
United Nations Development Programme and System 1xlong
Violent Borders 1xlong
We Kill Because We Can From Soldiering to Assassination in the Drone Age 1xlong
What Would Animals Say If We Asked the Right Questions? (PostHumanities) 1xlong
Women and Militant Wars: The Politics of Injury 1xlong, 1xebook
Women in African Parliaments 1xlong
Young People in the Labour Market: Past, Present, Future (Youth, Young Adulthood and Society) 1xlong
Young People Re-Generating Politics in Times of Crisis 1xlong
Young People’s Perspectives on Education, Training and Employment: Realising Their Potential 1xlong

 

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Resource in Focus: Finding UK news with Lexis

Lexis is primarily a legal database, but it also provides access to UK news from 1990 to the present day.

This resource covers national and regional newspapers, as well as broadsheets. We speak to a lot of students and academics who don’t realise that this resource covers publications such as The Times Educational Supplement and The Times Higher Education (although we now also have an institutional account for The Times Higher Education. Details of how to set up an account and access it can be found here).

For more information on what sources are covered by Lexis, simply click on ‘Sources’ section located in the top right hand corner once you are logged in. Below is a short introductory video of how to access and find information in Lexis. If you are looking for information on how to access international and historic newspapers, as well as business and TV/audio news, then check out our newspaper resources guide.