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Year 12 Society & Culture: Research: Referencing

For research projects as large as the PIP, we recommend that you create an account with Zotero so that your research and references are backed up on the cloud

Referencing

What is referencing?

Referencing is a standardised method of acknowledging sources of information and ideas that you have used in your assignments or research, in a way that uniquely identifies the source. It is not only necessary for avoiding plagiarism, but also for supporting your ideas and arguments. 

References must be provided wherever you quote (se exact words), paraphrase (use other people's ideas expressed in your own words), summarise (use main points of someone else's opinions, theories or data) or use other people's data. Your references may be sources of information such as books, periodicals, web sites, newspapers, government reports, legal cases, electronic recording (CD, DVD, television) or brochures.

Chicago 17th

About Chicago Style

There are two parts to Chicago referencing:

  • The citations, or references, within the text of your paper. These are set out as footnotes at the bottom of the page.
  • The reference list (or bibliography) at the end of your paper.

Chicago style is an "author-date" style.

APA 7th

About APA

APA referencing style is an author-date referencing system published by the American Psychological Association. 

There are two components in the APA referencing style: in-text citations and their corresponding reference list entries. With anything that you have read, used and referred to in your academic writing, you must:

  • acknowledge in text (i.e. in the work / assignment/ essay you are writing)
  • include in your reference list (i.e. the list at the end of your work of all the sources you refer to)

Referencing with APA 7th Style – Brief Guide

 

Reference list vs. Bibliography

A reference list lists only the sources you refer to in your writing.

The purpose of the reference list is to allow your sources to be be found by your reader.  It also gives credit to authors you have consulted for their ideas.  All references cited in the text must appear in the reference list, except for personal communications (such as conversations or emails) which cannot be retrieved.  

bibliography is different from a reference list as it lists all the sources used during your research and background reading, not just the ones you refer to in your writing.

Zotero

Zotero is a tool that you can download to assist you store, keep track of and organise your references for citations. It can be used for all refencing styles, including Chicago 17. The really useful thing about Zotero is that it captures the data of a source with the click of a button. It then saves that data in your Zotero library and taps into it to automatically create a correct citation.

You need to download the Zotero software to your machine. Please see the screencast below for assitance with this. Please note you need to download both the Zotero program AND the connector to help you capture the data from electronic resources.

It does take a bit of use to get the hang of Zotero, but once you do, it becomes second-nature and is quite straightforward to use. And as with anything, please check all citations generated by Zotero to ensure there are no problems. Nothing beats the human eye for this kind of crosschecking.

Please note that you need to choose Chicago 17 (full note) for your History assignments in your Zotero preferences.

Downloading Zotero (screencast)

How to save a reference to your Zotero library (Screencast)

Managing your Zotero Library and Folders (Screencast)

How to create a bibliography using Zotero (without using in-text citations or footnotes)

How to footnote using Zotero and Word