CZ:Bibliography

What is a Bibliography?

A bibliography is a listing of the most valuable serious sources on a topic, including articles, books and web pages.

The bibliography is most useful in pointing to serious sources that readers can use for further in-depth reading on a topic, for exploring major alternative interpretations, and for preparing a written report like a college term paper or report for a high school AP course.

The article bibliographies do NOT necessarily reflect the sources authors actually use in preparing the article. (Wikipedia has a policy to that effect because the editors there have to convince each other they know something about the topic. In CZ, the editors are the evaluators.)

The bibliography should emphasize English-language sources as much as possible (including translations of course).

It should include both primary and secondary sources. It should if possible indicate that items are available online, and if possible link to them (through JSTOR, Books.google.com, Questia, Ebsco, Project Muse, Gutenberg, etc.) Links to Amazon.com are welcome if they provide new information, such as graphics (e.g. the cover or illustrations), a table of contents, an excerpt, a search-the-book routine, or useful reviews.

Outdated sources should be avoided--although if they are online and better sources are not online, we should include both. If a source is poor quality or heavily biased that should be noted in the annotation.

The bibliography should include short annotations (or sometimes abstracts) making clear the value of the source.