WHAT IS MESOGRAPHY? MOST RELEVANT CHARACTERISTICS - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2025

The mesografía is the list of electronic sources consulted in the preparation of written work in particular investigation or any particular topic.

It is quite similar to bibliography, but limited to compiling material references exclusively online.

The word is made up of the terms meso which means "means" and spelling which means "written" or "record". In this case, it is the electronic media that can be found in cyberspace that are registered when having the product of an investigation or documentary analysis.

In research papers, essays and articles this list is located at the end in a section, generally called mesographic references, mesography, webgraphy, webgraphic references, or simply consulted / cited electronic sources.

The growth, usefulness and functionality of the Internet as a basic interactive element of the life of the world population, was opening spaces of extreme importance to the type and quality of information uploaded to the web.

This exponential technological advance opened the field to the scientific and educational sectors, a fact that prompted research experts and documentary makers to recognize web materials as valid sources of information, with academic weight similar to conventional books and prints.

In this way, electronic means were included within the existing norms for citing said material, and making the respective reference to consulted sources.

The most used electronic sources

The most common means of consultation on the Internet are web pages, especially in the form of articles that can be found on official sites of organizations, institutions and companies, online magazine-style periodicals, editorials, blog posts, and other platforms.

There are also libraries, encyclopedias and web dictionaries, sites with specialized databases, wikis, forum entries, sites with statistics, online slide shows, portfolios, programs, applications, videos, audios, among others.

Finally there are the complete publications uploaded to the Internet. Among these, books stand out, both the editions produced especially for electronic media (e-book) and complete scans uploaded to the web of real physical books.

In this same category there are also documents such as essays, monographs, academic texts, research theses, graduate works, dissertations, among others.

This type of material can be found both to be viewed online and to be downloaded (for example, in.pdf and.doc formats).

Important considerations

Despite the fact that currently the rise of digital technology allows easy access to endless documentary material of a serious nature, the scientific and educational communities also consider that this same facility allows the existence of much information on the web without academic validity.

Therefore, a great deal of emphasis is placed on the quality of the information that is sought in cyberspace. If the material is on the websites of organizations, institutions and companies, or under their reference, it will have greater academic validity.

As in traditional bibliography, the idea of ​​the reference list is both to give credit to the authors whose material was consulted, and to allow curious readers to go directly to the sources used in an investigation.

In this digital electronic world it is also much easier to find these sources through the access address or URL. The URL is probably the main distinguishing element between traditional bibliographic references and mesographs.

With just one click on the address, or by copying the access link and pasting it in an Internet browser, you immediately have the page with the information consulted on the screen of the computer or mobile device.

Order and format

There are several types of standards to make the list of mesographic references, but they all require basically the same elements, which are:

- Author of the material

- Title of the material (or titles)

- Publication information (name of the page, name of the institution or organization -if applicable-, place of publication -if it has it-, identification of the digital copy of the material -if it has it-)

- Year of publication

- Date of consultation

- Access address (URL)

APA style

One of the most used systems in the educational academic field is that of the American Psychological Association, better known as the APA standards, for its acronym in English, of the institute called American Psychological Association.

If all the elements mentioned above exist, the APA order to make a reference to an Internet source is as follows:

• Author's last name, First initial. (Year). Title in italics. Publication information. Consultation date. Retrieved from URL

If it did not have any of these elements, it would simply not be placed and the initial order is maintained, except when the source has no author.

In this case, the main name of the page is located in the place of the author, keeping the rest of the elements in the same order:

• Name of the page (Year). Title in italics. Rest of the publication information. Consultation date. Retrieved from URL

Depending on the type of material online, the page numbers of the source consulted may also be included. However, this is not mandatory in the APA standards.

Generally this applies to electronic books or other type of document that has the material presented in pages, and would be added to the end of the publication information.

Each item in the reference list must be arranged alphabetically by the author's last name. If there are several sources with the same author, the publication date is used to define the order. Likewise, each item has a marked left indentation.

Examples

- Web article with author

Gonzalez, R. (2012). Causes of Environmental Pollution. Accessed August 20, 2016. Retrieved from

- Web article without author

National Geographic in Spanish (2016). The Origin of Chocolate. Mexico. Accessed July 15, 2017. Retrieved from ngenespanol.com/fotografia/lo-mas/11/11/04/origen-del-chocolate/

Online magazine article

Rowland, T. (2015). Feminism from the Perspective of Catholicism. Solidarity: The Journal of Catholic Social Thought and Secular Ethics, vol. 5, no. 1. The University of Notre Dame. Australia. Accessed December 12, 2015. Retrieved from

Ebook

Salcedo Bastardo, JL (1977). Fundamental history of Venezuela. (online book). Gran Mariscal de Ayacucho Foundation. Accessed April 2, 2009. Retrieved from

If the URL is very long, you can only add the access link to the main page of the source consulted, as in the previous case. The rest of the elements in the reference should serve to locate the exact material in that direction.

References

1. University of Southern Maine (2011). Citing Electronic Sources APA Format. The writing Center at USM's Lewinston-Auburn College. Recovered from usm.maine.edu
2. Life in America: The Reagan Years, A Webography. Webography 101: A Very Short Introduction to Bibliographies on the Internet. Recovered from 1980swebography.weeble.com
3. Portfolio of educational work: ICT for the attention of SEN (2013). Mesography. Recovered from sites.google.com
4. Medina Guadalupe (2013). What is the word "Mesography"? Prezi. Recovered from prezi.com
5. Fleming Grace (2017). What Is a Bibliography? ThoughtCo. Recovered from thoughtco.com
6. Guerrero Sampiero Miguel (2008). Didactic unit "Citing references" (Online document). Autonomous University of the State of Hidalgo.
7. University of New South Wales - Current Students. How do I cite Electronic Sources? UNSW Sydney. Recovered from student.unsw.edu.au