The University of Adelaide Library

Library tutorial for agricultural, animal & veterinary sciences

Section 2. Interpreting citations.

You will often start with a reading list or bibliography containing citations (also called references) to books and journal articles. To find them in the Library catalogue, you must know which are citations to books and which are citations to journal articles, because you search for each in a different way.

Your reading list may also include the terms ibid and op. cit.:
ibid., p. 101 means page 101 of the work cited immediately above
Nerlich, op. cit. p. 104 means page 104 of the work by Nerlich cited earlier.

Various citation styles (referencing styles) can be used (e.g. italics, underlining, journal abbreviations, different order of components).
The examples shown illustrate the Harvard referencing style.

Book citation

You can identify a citation to a book by the presence of:

author(s) or editor(s) and book title
publisher and place of publication.

For example:

You can search for books in the catalogue by title, by author, or by combinations of title and author keywords.

Chapter in a book

You can identify a citation to a chapter in a book by the presence of both a chapter title and a book title, the word 'in' before the title of the book, publisher and place of publication. For example:

In the Library catalogue, you need to search for the book containing the chapter, not the chapter itself. In the example, you would search for the book title Modern East Asia, not the chapter title. The only exceptions are chapters on Departments' reading lists: if the Library has linked to an electronic copy of a chapter, you will find it under the chapter title in the catalogue.

Journal article citation

Journals (also called periodicals, serials or magazines) are publications like Journal of agricultural science or New Scientist which are published frequently (e.g. weekly, monthly or quarterly), contain articles by different authors and usually cover a particular subject area such as soil science or business.

You can identify a journal article citation by:

the presence of volume number, issue number, and pagination
the absence of the word 'in', name of publisher or place of publication

Note: the title of the article is often omitted.

Each month (quarter, etc) of a journal is an issue e.g. the July issue. A year of issues is a volume e.g. the 1992 volume. (Some journals collect issues into more than one volume per year). Most journals number their volumes and issues, for example, the July issue of Volume 27 is issue 7 and is cited as 27(7). Sometimes the issue number is omitted from a citation.

In the Library catalogue, you need to search for the journal title containing an article (e.g. Journal of contemporary history), not the article title. The only exceptions are articles on Departments' reading lists: if the Library has linked to an electronic copy of an article, you will find it under the article title in the catalogue.

Journal titles are often abbreviated e.g. Sci Am rather than Scientific American. When searching for journal articles in the catalogue, you usually need full journal titles which you can find in Web and print j ournal and abbreviations sources (web page will open in a new window. To return to this tutorial, close the window).
The main print list is Periodical title abbreviations: By Abbreviation (vol. 1) kept in Waite Reference 05:003 P44 or Roseworthy Reference 050.148 2.11 or on a table behind the Barr Smith Library Information desk

Citing in your own essays

When you cite books and journal articles in your essays, follow the citation styles recommended by each Department.

The Library web site lists Web and printed Style guides which can help you with citing and essay writing techniques (web page will open in a new window. To return to this tutorial, close the window).

Back to tutorial main page | Continue to Section 3: Searching for known books and journals