Citation management

A guide to saving citations and creating bibliographies from the State Library catalogue.

What are citation styles?

A citation style is a set of guidelines and formatting specifications that define how inline citations and a bibliographic list are presented in a published work. The primary goal of a citation style is to ensure all references are presented in a consistent manner and to ensure sufficient information is presented to allow source materials to be found.

There are many different citation styles and the correct one to use will depend on the circumstances. For school or university assignments, your instructor or school should specify the citation style to follow. If you intend to submit your work to a magazine or journal for publication, check the submission guidelines for details of the style to use. For longer form works such as books, you'll probably work with an editor or other staff from a publisher who will advise to correct citation style to employ.

The key point to note where citations are concerned is to remain consistent throughout your work regardless of the chosen style.

The Library catalogue offers four built-in citation styles to choose from: APA (6th edition), Chicago/Turabian (16th edition), Harvard (Author-Date), and MLA (7th or 8th edition), or you can choose to import a citation directly into an online citation management tool.

Please note: whenever using built-in citation styles, please be sure to check the citations for accuracy before including them in your work.

APA

APA Style is a citation style and format described in the style guide of the American Psychological Association (APA), entitled Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, (with the sixth edition being the most recently published).

APA was initially developed for use in social science publications, but is now widely used in scientific journals (especially medical and public health), textbooks and general academia.

Chicago/Turabian

Chicago Style is a citation style and format developed at the University of Chicago and described in The Chicago Manual of Style (sometimes abbreviated as CMS or CMOS), currently in its seventeenth edition.

Kate L. Turabian is the original author of A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations which is based on The Chicago Manual of Style.

Harvard (Author-Date)

Harvard referencing, also known as author-date or parenthetical referencing, is a style of citation in which an in-text citation, comprising the author/s surname and year of publication of a referenced work, is enclosed within parentheses and appears either within or after a sentence.

For example, "When using a formal reference style, consistency is paramount (Jones 2017)."

Unlike many other referencing styles, there is no published source for applying Harvard style referencing, however, the Style manual for authors, editors and printers (6th ed., 2002) includes a chapter outlining the correct usage of this style.

MLA

MLA Style is a citation style and format described in the MLA Handbook (8th ed., 2016) published by the Modern Language Association of America. The handbook is primarily aimed at students and teachers of secondary schools and university.

More about citations

Use the links below to find more resources available in the catalogue or view the details for some of the items available in the Library.

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