I need a concise webpage that will give me all the information I need
to write a bibliography for a paper correctly. Also, I am not sure
which format to use (MLA,APA etc., one has not been specified by my
professor).  The subject is history of technology.

Hi reasonable!

There are a number of web pages on the net that can help you write the
ever-important bibliography. I have included links to some of the more
useful ones below.

As for choosing between the different styles (MLA vs. APA etc) I would
recommend the MLA as it is a common standard for a liberal arts
course.

A Research Guide for the Student by I. Lee. Chapter 11 deals with
writing a bibliography using MLA style.
http://www.aresearchguide.com/11guide.html
This second link from the same site as above provides bibliography
examples in MLA style.
http://www.aresearchguide.com/12guide.html

“Writing an Annoted Bibliography” by Owen Williams, University of
Minnesota, Crookston Library. This style guide uses APA formatting:
http://www.crk.umn.edu/library/links/annotate.htm

A generically formatted bibliography style guide can be found here:
http://www.netc.org/classrooms@work/classrooms/jane/learning/bibliography.html

The following link will take you to a very useful page on the SUNY
Oneonta website that lists a collection of links to the various style
options for writing a bibliography -- including APA and MLA as well as
numerous others. http://www.oneonta.edu/library/infoliteracy/bibliog.html

I used the following search on Google:
write bibliography
://www.google.com/search?q=write+bibliography

Good luck with you paper!
Firefly

---

Clarification of Answer by firefly-ga on 26 Apr 2002 22:25 PDT

Sorry, it seems that my second link from "A Research Guide for the
Student" is incorrect. The correct link should be:
http://www.aresearchguide.com/12biblio.html

Reasonable,

If you have time to get a book from a bookstore or the library, the
essential, standard guide to writing bibliographies is Kate Turabian's
*A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses and Dissertations.*

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226816273/jengod05/

Also, it seems that the Open Directory has a number of resources to
help you out, including some devoted specifically to electronic
references:

http://directory.google.com/Top/Arts/Writers_Resources/Non-Fiction/Research_Papers/

You might want to check out the Citation Guides subcategory.

Hi Reasonable,

In addition to the advice above, you may wish to consider which
software you will use. Some software lets you enter your references as
a database. It can then construct your bibliography in any style and
change your mind later.

For example, if you use MS Word, EndNote may be useful:
http://www.isiresearchsoft.com/en/enhome.htm

If you use LaTeX, BibTeX may be useful:
http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~jacobsd/bib/formats/bibtex.html

This should not be seen as an endorsement of those products, they are
just ones I have used. See also:
http://php.iupui.edu/~rsosborn/Scholars_Quest/References/Gathering/Reference_Tools/BibliographicSoftware.html


Search terms used:
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=bibliography+software+word

Regards,
iain-ga

You might also want to take a look at http://www.noodletools.com.
While they have just started charging for their full service, you can
still use their free collection of CGI scripts at
http://www.noodletools.com/quickcite/ that allow you to enter details
about the specific webpage, book, article, etc... that you wish to
cite in a webpage form and retrieve citations in MLA format. The full
service is only $4 a month and is well worth it if you need to write
lots of Citations, it has many more different citation types than the
free 'quickcite' version and allows you to create entire
bibilographies and export them to as a RTF document to import into
your word processor.