Bibliography (from Greek βιβλιογραφία, lit. book writing) in its most general sense is the study and description of books. It can be divided into enumerative or systematic bibliography, which results in an overview of publications in a particular category, and analytical or critical bibliography, which studies the production of books. Bibliographical works are almost always considered tertiary sources.

Enumerative bibliography

A bibliography is a list, either indicative or comprehensive, of works:

• author
• subject
• country or state
• published in a specified period
• mentioned in, or relevant to, a particular work (a bibliography of this type, sometimes called a reference list should normally appear at the end of any paper in scientific literature)

A bibliography may be arranged by author, date, topic or some other scheme. Annotated bibliographies give descriptions about how each source is useful to an author in constructing a paper or argument. Creating these blurbs, usually a few sentences long, establishes a summary for and expresses the relevance of each source prior to writing.

Bibliographies differ from library catalogs by including all relevant publications rather than items actually found in a particular library. However, some national libraries' catalogs also serve as national bibliographies, as they contain (almost) all their countries' publications.

Analytical bibliography

The critical study of bibliography is subdivided into descriptive, historical, and textual bibliography. Descriptive bibliography is the close examination of a book as a physical object, recording its size, format, binding, and so on, while historical bibliography takes a broader view of printing and publishing. Textual bibliography is another name for textual criticism.

See also

• Ibid
• List of bibliographies
• Op cit
• BibTeX
• Inflight Referencer
• The Collection of Computer Science Bibliographies

Bibliography

Belanger, Terry. Bibliography defined. Bibliographical Society of America, 2003

External links

• WIKINDX Free bibliography manager and citation formatter
• OttoBib Generate bibliographies (MLA/APA/APA/Chicago) with the ISBN
• Buildref.comBuild your personal bibliography database online for free
• Machine Automatically generate an APA or MLA citation from a URL

Bibliography | Books | Library and information science

Bibliografia | Bibliografi | Bibliografie | Bibliografía | Bibliographie | ביבליוגרפיה | Bibliografie | 書誌学 | Bibliografia | Bibliografia | Bibliografia | Bibliografi | 目录学