Library tutorial for science
Section 2. Searching for known books and journal articles
in the Library catalogue

2A. Interpret citations

Maynard Smith, J. (1998) Shaping life: genes, embryos and evolution. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London.

It shows:
an author (Maynard Smith, J)
the date the book was published (1998)
the book title (Shaping life...)
the publisher (Weidenfeld and Nicolson)
the place of publication (London).
Section 2B shows you how to search for such a book in the Library catalogue.

Book chapter citations like:

Gripp, K. (1994) End moraines. In Cold climate landforms, ed. D.J.A. Evans, 255-267. John Wiley, Chichester.

differ in having both details of the chapter (whose author is Gripp and title is End moraines)
and details of the book (whose editor is Evans and title is Cold climate landforms).
A clear sign of a chapter is the word "in" before the book title.
Like books, book chapters include a publisher.
Search the Library catalogue for the book not the chapter - see section 2B.

Journal article citations such as:

Budyko, M. (1999) Climate catastrophes. Global and planetary change. 20(4), 281-288.

differ in showing a volume number, and often an issue number, and no publisher.
Journals (also called periodicals, serials or magazines) are publications like New scientist, Nature, Journal of biological chemistry which are published in weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc issues. Each issue contains a collection of articles by different authors. 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).

Question In the Budyko citation above, what tells you that this is a journal article citation? What do you think the journal title is? What do you think the article title is? Answer The volume number (20) and issue number (4) suggest a journal article. Also, unlike a book or book chapter, it has no publisher and no "in" before the journal title. The journal title is Global and planetary change and is the more important of the two titles. Section 2C shows how to search the journal title in the Library catalogue. The article title is Climate catastrophes. An article title is not always in the citation but, if present, it always appears before the journal title.

You will come across different citation styles e.g. italics or bold type or underlining or the date at the end rather than the beginning.
You may also see the terms ibid and op. cit.:
ibid., p. 101, meaning page 101 of the work cited immediately above,
Maynard Smith, op. cit., p.104 meaning page 104 of the work by Maynard Smith cited earlier.

Back to tutorial main page | Continue to section 2B