Where To Find A Good Dissertation Bibliography Example

Fantastic news, you’ve nearly reached the end of your dissertation. You only have your bibliography left to write. Do not ease off yet; this is one of the most parts of your paper. In it you show your rigorous research. More importantly you use it to show that you are not a plagiarist. You give proper credit to other people’s ideas and show how you have built on their work to produce your own original ideas.

The bibliography is usually located at the end of the paper. It would be tempting just to collect all the sources together after you have written your paper, but it is far easier to collate the information if you keep a handy list of your sources as you are working from them and taking your notes.

You want to present your work in the best possible way, but unless your sources are written in a regular format they will be difficult for your readers to follow. You know the format and all the guidelines but you’d prefer it if you could just see how someone else approached the work.

Where to look.

• One of the first places to look would be your supervisor’s dissertation. No doubt you have already checked in there for the sort of writing style he or she prefers, flick to the end and examine the bibliography.
• If you are required to write using a particular format, for example the APA format or the MLA format, the style guides for each of these will tell you exactly how to set out your work.
• If you want to see an actual example in APA format, the website of the American Psychological Society often displays copies of good papers written in the correct style.
• Your college library will hold copies of past work. Ask your librarian if you can see them, although it will be up to you to decide if they are worth exploring.
• For excellent samples of many kinds of writing look at the websites of online writing labs. They will display the work of their best students in the hope of attracting more.
• Online writing companies also advertise for work by displaying prime samples of their essays and papers on their websites. If you look over these, you might locate an excellent bibliography.

There are online citation generators in the various styles. If nothing else, it will give you the correct order of words for your required style.