HOW TO MAKE A BIBLIOGRAPHIC CARD? (WITH EXAMPLES) - LITERATURE

We explain how to make a bibliographic or bibliography card so that you can maintain a good organization during the writing process of any research document.

A bibliographic record is an annotation that is made at the end of an article or book with the information of the sources that have been used to make it. Include author, article or book title, publication date, publisher, and pages.

On the other hand, a collection of bibliographic records helps to create an index for the accelerated search of the information (such as a catalog of a library).

This useful and extremely accessible system, given its low cost, widely used worldwide, was invented by the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus around the year 1760.

Making it is simple and can be done manually or with computer programs. Here we will explain how to do it manually. At the end of this article you can see some bibliographic sources that have been used to make this article.

As a curiosity and so that you understand how a scientific article is cited correctly, I will give you a first example with one of the most cited articles in history:

Einstein, A. (1905). Does the inertial mass depend on Energy? Annals of Physics.

Steps to make a bibliographic card

You must make a new bibliographic card each time you find a new source. Remember that you have to give all sources proper credit to avoid plagiarism.

1- Write the author's last name, followed by a comma and a single name. If there is more than one author, add the other author / s or add the Latin phrase et al.

Example: Jung, C.

2- Then write the publication date. Example: (1994).

3- In the next line write the title of the article or book. If the source has no author, start with the title. To easily identify the title of the book, it should be underlined. Example: Archetypes and the collective unconscious.

4- In the next line write the city of publication, followed by a comma and the publisher of the book or the name of the journal where the article was published. Example: Barcelona, Paidós.

It would look like this: Jung, C. (1994). Archetypes and the collective unconscious. Barcelona, Paidós.

The example I have shown you is the most common; for articles or books. However, below I will show you examples in other cases.

Examples of bibliographic records

Bibliographic citations can be short or long, and take different styles. Some of the most common styles are the APA (American Psychological Association), the MLA (Modern Language Association) or the Harvard Style.

In any quote, the necessary data must be mentioned so that the person who reads it can find the source from which the information was taken. The minimum data contained by any citation is the name of the author and the year in which his work was published.

For online magazine or web pages

Some examples of APA style bibliographic references can be found below:

Cooper, J. (September 30, 2015). How the lungs work. Discovering the human anatomy. Recovered from interstelar.com.
Rodríguez, R. (September 27, 1989). The canine sense of smell. Dictionary of animal anatomy. Recovered from loversdelasmascotas.com

To make a bibliographic reference of an online journal according to the APA style, it is very important to include the following elements:

1- Name: is the name of the person responsible for the writing of the journal article to be cited. It is to whom its creation is attributed. The first surname is put followed by the initials of the name, like this:

Jervis, T.

2- Date: is the date the article in question was published. It is written in parentheses after the author's name, like this:

Jervis, T. (November 13, 2017)

3- Title: is the name given by the author to his article. It is the way we can find the article in the magazine. Example:

4- Name of the magazine: is the name that appears on the cover of the magazine from which the article was taken. It should be in italics, like this:

5- Retrieved from: address or URL where the article can be found.

For books

Some examples of APA style bibliographic references can be found below:

Selen, H. (2016). The trip of my life. Paris France. Sheet of Paper Editions.
Nieto, D. (2017). Overcoming bone marrow cancer. Medellin, Antioquia. Editions Universidad de Antioquia.

To make a bibliographic reference of a book according to the APA style, it is very important to include the following elements:

1- Author's Name: is the name of the person responsible for writing the book. It is to whom its creation is attributed. Usually your last name is placed first, followed by the initials of the first name.

In the case that several authors are being cited, their names must be separated by commas, like this:

JEervis, P. and Tatiana, M.

2- Year of publication: it is the year in which the book in question was published. It is written in parentheses after the author's name, like this:

Jervis, P. (2017)

3- Title of the book: is the name given by the author to his work. It is the way we can find the book in a library. It is written in italics or slanted, like this:

4- City and country of publication: it is the geographical location where the book was published. It is located after the title of the book, like this:

A starry night in Paris. Medellin Colombia.

5- Publishing house: it is the company that was in charge of editing and publishing the work. It is the last item located in the appointment. An example would be the following:

Mejía Jervis Editores

For scientific articles

Einstein, A. (1905). Does the inertial mass depend on Energy? Pages 639-641. Annals of Physics.

E-books

For a whole book:

Jiménez, I. (2005). Cemetery. Recovered from ikerjimenez.com.

For a particular chapter:

Jiménez, I. (2005). Beginnings in the cemetery (name of the chapter). Cemetery. Recovered from ikerjimenez.com.

Youtube

Jiménez, I. (June 22, 2018). Conspiracies of history. Recovered from

Twitter and facebook

Gates, B.. (June 22, 2018). Earlier this month, the world lost one of the greatest vaccine creators of our time. Dr. Adel Mahmoud saved the lives of countless children. Taken from

Origin of bibliographic records

We mentioned at the beginning of the text that the bibliographic cards were born from the hand of Carl Linnaeus.

This avant-garde of methodology and "father of modern taxonomy" needed a system for organizing data that could be easily expanded and reorganized, so he wrote each piece of information on individual sheets that he added to his data collection.

However, index cards, as they are known today, began to be used in libraries in the 1870s.

It should be noted that, once again and as always, each human innovation responds to the imminent satisfaction of a specific need: in this case we are dealing with, it is about the organization of data.

The most common size of bibliographic cards is 3 by 5 inches (76.2 by 127 mm). Other available sizes include 4 by 6 inch (101.6 by 152.4 mm), 5 by 8 inch (127 by 203.2 mm) tab and A7 size (2.9 by 4.1 inches or 74 by 105 mm).

Bibliographic cards should be made on white cards that come with a red line and several blue lines printed on it.

However, there are a variety of cards on the market in a variety of colors and with protruding tabs to better organize them, as well as various boxes and trays to store said cards.

It was not until the 1980s that the digitization of library catalogs began.

Therefore, before that date, the main tool used to locate books were the bibliographic cards in which each book was described in three cards, classified alphabetically under its title, author and subject.

The adoption of standard cataloging protocols in all nations with international agreements, along with the emergence of the Internet and the conversion of cataloging systems into digital storage and retrieval, has made the widespread use of bibliographic records for cataloging obsolete.

References

Dean J. How to make bibliography cards for websites. Recovered from: penandthepad.com.
Gibaldi J. MLA handbook for writers of research papers (1984). New York: Modern Language Association of America.
Hagler R. The bibliographic record and information technology (1997). American Library Association.
McDonald M. How to make bibliography cards. Recovered from: penandthepad.com
Miller E, Ogbuji U, Mueller V, MacDougall K. Bibliographic framework as a web of data: linked data model and supporting services (2012). Library of Congress.
Shewan E. Writing a research paper (2007). Illinois: Christian Liberty Press.
Taylor A. The organization of information (2009). Westport: Libraries Unlimited.
Chesea Lee (2013). How to Cite Social Media in APA Style (Twitter, Facebook, and Google+). Recovered from blog.apastyle.org.

HOW TO MAKE A BIBLIOGRAPHIC CARD? (WITH EXAMPLES) - LITERATURE - 2025