History of Ancient Religion

Research and Citations Center

Bibliography

Every written assignment must have a bibliography listing all books and articles used.

Here’s what it should look like:

The idea is that anyone looking at your paper should be able to find the sources you used. So you list each source you used with its basic identifying info. For books, that’s author, year, title, and publisher.

FAQ: Bibliography
  • Where can I find the info? Check the copyright page. If there’s more than one copyright year, use the earliest one. Or look it up on worldcat.org.
  • Ebooks too? Yes. Online full-text ebooks and ebooks downloaded to a reader must also be listed. Usually there’s still a copyright page. With full-text resources found through the Library’s OneSearch feature, the info you need will be on the library info page you opened it up from.
  • Chicago style? MLA? I don’t care which academic style you use. Two things matter: that you list each source you used (once), and that each entry contains author, year, title, and publisher.
  • What about journal articles? Same idea: you give the author, year, article title, journal name, journal volume number, and page range. See the third entry in the sample above for an example.
  • How do I list online primary sources? Online primary sources were almost always transcribed from a book. Most of the time the info on that book is listed at the beginning of the translation, or at the bottom of the web page. Make sure to include the translator’s name, the year, and the publisher. If you can’t find it, email me.