Footnotes & Bibliography
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org,
please feel free to visit the school website)
Many of you may remember that not too long ago the author of a book or paper would have had to footnote every quote by placing a number by the quote and writing out a complete footnote referencing the source at the bottom of the page. That is no longer done. To quote the Master’s Thesis Guidelines at the University of Metaphysical Studies, “Instead, use the ‘year in parentheses’ method. This is the new and acceptable way in the academic world to handle footnotes. There are two ways to use this method. You can include only the year after the title of the book or you can include the year and the page number after the title of the book. All book titles should be in italics.”
The bibliography is a list of all references used in your research and is placed at the end of the text. This may include books, magazine articles, Internet resources or any other resource. Also in your thesis guideline, “Just because a book is in the bibliography, this does not mean that you have to read it from cover to cover. You only need to read the parts of the book that are necessary for your research and are related to your subject.”
Alphabetize your bibliography, beginning with the last name of the author followed by the most recent copyright date, the name of the book or article, the publisher and place of publication. All this information can be found on the copyright page. If there are more than two authors, only list the first author followed by ‘et al’ to signify there are more than two authors. With magazine articles, you must include the month of publication and, in some cases, the page numbers. Please refer to the bibliography at the end of the paper, and your other UMS courses, for an example. Internet resources must be listed separately beneath the list of books and articles.