Library Tutorial for Public Health
Section 2. Deciphering references in a reading list or bibliography
Before you search our catalogue you need to know what you're looking for. This sounds basic - until you're confronted with a list of references, or a bibliography. Remember Alice's dilemma!
Books and journal articles are two of the commonest types of resources in public health. Journals (also called periodicals, serials or magazines) are publications like BMJ, Nature, Australian & New Zealand Journal of Public Health which are published frequently (eg. weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually) and contain articles by different authors.
When a lecturer gives you a list of citations to useful books or journal articles you'll need to be able to decipher these in order to look them up in the catalogue.
Book citations look something like:
Rose, G (1992) The strategy of preventive medicine. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
where Rose, G is the author, 1992 is the date the book was published, The strategy of preventive medicine... is the book title, Oxford University Press is the publisher, and Oxford is the place of publication. |
Distinguishing references to book chapters and journal articles is a bit more of a challenge.
What do they have in common?
| They both have page numbers to identify the individual chapter or journal article. |
| Citations to journal articles typically also show a volume number/issue number e.g. 26(3) and no publisher. (Many journals have one volume per year and, for example, 12 monthly issues per volume. The March issue of volume 26 is then issue 3 and is cited as 26(3).) |
| Citations to book chapters have both a chapter title and a book title and the word in before the book title. |
For a simple demonstration of the three different citations click here. There is an interactive question and answer section which you can try if you like.
Questions
Below are 3 citations (references) . Are they for books, book chapters, or journal articles?
How do you know?
1. Realini J. P. (2004) Teenage pregnancy prevention: what can we do? American Family Physician. 70(8):1457-8.
2. Webster, I. (1998) Choices in health. In The tasks of medicine : an ideology of care, ed. P. Baume, 61-72. MacLennan & Petty, Sydney.
3. Baum, F. (2002) The new public health, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, Vic.
ANSWERS |
Different publications use different citation styles e.g. they may use italics or bold type or underlining, put the date at the end or omit the article title.
You may also come across the terms ibid and op. cit. in a bibliography.
ibid., p. 101 - means page 101 of the work cited immediately above,
Rose, op. cit., p.104 - means page 104 of the work by Rose cited earlier in the list of references.
Answers
1. The first reference is for a journal article - the name of the journal is American Family Physician, and the article was published in 2004 in volume number 70, issue number 8, on pages 1457-8. There is no publisher listed.
2. The second reference is to a book chapter where the chapter title is Choices in health, and the book title is The tasks of medicine...Notice the word In before the book title. The book is edited by P Baume, but the author of the chapter is I Webster, and the chapter is on pages 61-72. The book was published in 1998, in Sydney, by the publisher MacLennan and Petty.
3. The third reference is to a book where F. Baum is the author, 2002 is the date the book was published, The new public health is the book title, Oxford University Press is the publisher, and South Melbourne, Vic. is the place of publication
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