Referencing: Where to start?

At JCU and most universities you are required to write assignments, essays, blog entries, posters that contain references to mainly academic and scholarly sources. You can ask for assistance with checking your references at the Library InfoHelp desk. The library staff can check your references (usually you can have your reference list done and ready for checking a few days before the due date) and give you advice and training on how to correct the list.

Before you come to the library or if you can't get in a good place to go to check referencing styles is the Referencing LibGuide. There are many referencing styles like APA, Vancouver, Harvard and your lecturer will often specify one specific style in the Subject Outline and marking rubric. To see how some styles look compared to each other, check out the Parts of Citation from the Referencing LibGuide.

There are also plenty of useful explanations scattered across the other LibGuides. My favourites are:

1. For APA in-text citations, a video located on the Tertiary Access Course LibGuide Referencing page.
2. An APA Sample Essay on the Writing LibGuide.
3. Another good example is the Annotated Bibliographies LibGuide, obviously for annotated bibliography task. It shows a variety of styles.

Also librarians know lots of quick and easy shortcuts to help cut down your time creating and formatting references, so come speak to us or book a time to go over your lists together. A tip is a keyboard shortcut for a hanging indent is use the Control and T on the keyboard.