Hello, hard workers! We hope Michaelmas term is treating you well. Whether you’re a first year undergraduate or a more experienced academic, referencing can be a complex thing. We thought now would be a good time to put together a blog of helpful library resources on referencing for you.
Please note: This is not intended to be a comprehensive guide on how to reference. Rather, we want to help you to access resources that can provide more thorough guidance. If in doubt, we always recommend contacting your faculty for advice.
Some Advice for English Students
There is no mandatory referencing system from the faculty, though individual tutors may have their own requirements. The most important things are consistency, clarity, and common sense (see the English Language and Literature LibGuide to read this explained in more detail). However, pre-written faculty support is provided for MHRA – so if you’re able to be flexible about what system you use, you may find this easiest as a starting point.
Whatever style you chose to use, we’ve laid out some resources below that may help you in your studies.
Course Handbooks
Your first port of call for referencing advice should always be your course handbook. For English students of all different courses and year groups, these can be found in the Oxford English Student Space. Your handbook will explain to you what referencing systems you can or should use for your faculty, and go into further detail on some of the most frequently used types of resources. Some handbooks even include guidance for subject specific resource referencing (such as for the Oxford English Dictionary or Text Analysis Tools for English Language and Literature students).
Referencing LibGuides
The English Faculty Library has put together a Referencing tab in our LibGuide which is full of detailed advice and helpful tips for English students. It explains some of the most commonly used referencing systems, bibliographies, and reference creation and management tools. This page is tailored to support members of the English Faculty, but similar pages are available for other subjects too. You can access a comprehensive referencing LibGuide on Managing your References.
Cite Them Right
Cite Them Right is a useful database to which the University of Oxford provides access for its members. You’ll need to log-in to SOLO with your SSO before accessing the website if you’re away from the university network. CTR explains how to create references for loads of different materials and in 8 different referencing systems. You also get the option to input the information to create a reference which you can copy and paste into your bibliography.
This offers usefully detailed information on resources like manuscripts, historical texts, reprints, and facsimiles, which can be particularly useful to scholars within the English faculty.
Citation Tools and Software
There are lots of citation tools and pieces of software that the university offers access to which may be of benefit to you. A couple of examples include
- SOLO Citations: SOLO will automatically generate text citations in 5 different referencing styles directly from the item SOLO record, which can be copied and pasted into your bibliography.
- Reference Managers: The University of Oxford offers its members free use of external reference managers such as RefWorks, EndNote, and also supports the always freely-available Mendeley. You can attend Bodleian iSkills workshops (when available) to teach you how to use these reference managers. Alternatively, you can access training materials at any time. If you find yourself struggling, the Bodleian even have an email address you can contact for help with reference management: reference-management@bodleian.ox.ac.uk
Useful Books
If you prefer manually creating citations, the following helpful titles are available through the library service.
- Neville, C. (2016) The complete guide to referencing and avoiding plagiarism. Third edition. London: Open University Press – Available in ebook and in print.
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Gibaldi, J. (2008) MLA style manual and guide to scholarly publishing. 3rd ed. New York: Modern Language Association of America. – Available in print.
We hope that these resources will be useful to you in your studies! Remember, if you’re every really stuck, you can always ask for help! The faculty and the library are always here if you need us.
Until then – happy reading!