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The Bibliography-Notecard Connection |
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As soon as you decide to use information from a particular source, write a bibliography card for it. Why? Picture this - you find an unbelievable book with just the information you need. You start to take notes and the bell rings, or there's a fire drill (fill in any reason that would force you to leave with little time to spare). When you come back you find that all the books have been neatly returned to the shelves. If you had only started your bibliography card! You are now going to have to go to the librarian and say something foolish like, "I had this really great book. It was big and sort-of reddish. My information is on page 21." That's not a whole lot of information to go on, considering just about every book has a page 21. And since the books aren't arranged by size or color, consider yourself lucky if the librarian just smiles and reminds you to start your bibliography card right away next time. Each resource (book, magazine article, Web site, etc.) gets its own bibliography card. Why? The citations on a works cited page are listed in alphabetical order. When you are done with your research and are preparing to type your works cited page, you will simply arrange your cards in alphabetical order and start typing. If you use You've Got Style (or the MLA Handbook) and wrote the citations in proper format from the beginning, all you will have to do is copy. Each bibliography card gets a letter.
The note cards will get letters too. These letters will correspond to the bibliography cards. For example, every note that comes out of resource "A" will also get an "A" on it. Why? So you won't have to keep copying the bibliographic information over and over. You will know that every note card that has an "A" on it came from resource "A." Every note card that has a "B" on it came from resource "B." And so on, and so on, and so on. Each note card will have a heading that corresponds to the outline of your research (see the Outline section for details). Do not write about more than one concept per card. Why? When you get ready to organize your notes into the paragraphs of your paper, you will group similar topics (cards with the same headings) together, and put them in the order of your outline. Use key words and phrases on note cards only. Do not write full sentences unless you are directly quoting and giving the author credit. Copying constitutes plagiarism. Include page numbers (if available) and a source note (required by some teachers). The following is a note card with all the parts labeled:
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