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Bibliographies

We mentioned bibliographies in the lesson on encyclopedias and in the lesson on the Library Catalog. In both places we explained that bibliographies are a great resource for locating further information on a topic. In addition to bibliographies found in the back of books and encyclopedia articles, there are individual books that are nothing but bibliographies. These bibliographies can be found in the MCTC library reference room in the 016 area, or in the subject area to which they belong.

Book-length bibliographies usually provide in-depth coverage of a specific field of study. They list books, periodical articles, reference resources, and even online resources in a field of study. When you locate an entry that you think might be helpful to your research you look to see if your library owns the item. For instance, if the item in the bibliography is a book, you search the library catalog by author or title to see if the library owns the book. If you are using WebPALS and the MCTC library does not own the book, you can search all the PALS libraries and request the book through interlibrary loan. If the item in the bibliography is a journal article you look to see if the library subscribes to the journal. If not you either search a full-text periodical database to see if it has the article or you request the article through interlibrary loan.

Here are a couple of examples of bibliographies:

Another example of a book-length bibliography is entitled A Bibliographical Guide to African-American Women Writers.

Reading the preface to this bibliography we discover that it was compiled by a library educator to promote research on the aspirations and achievements of African-American women writers. The author states: "This resulting bibliographical guide focuses on both the creative products of black women (primary sources) and the critical citations about the writers (secondary sources). Considerable attention is paid to self publications, subsidized publishers, and products of the small literary presses." If we were writing a paper on African-American women writers we just hit a gold mine. Below are examples showing citations for primary and secondary sources for Maya Angelou

Primary sources:

Secondary sources:

Most book-length bibliographies are compiled by scholars in a field of study or by librarians. These bibliographies take a long time to research and produce and they provide the researcher with links to a wealth of material.