5: Compiling a Bibilography
Estimated time: 2-4 hours
Google Scholar should be your best friend.
The next step in efficiently building your research topic is compiling articles that will make up a bibliography. A bibliography is a list of references in formal citation format. An annotated bibliography includes the citation and a summary of the article (a little bit more work on the front end, but can help in the long run). In turn, most of the articles you find during bibliography research will probably end up in your Reference section. When you have an idea of your topic/s, you can then complete academic searches using the search phrases to build the references that will be used in your Literature Review.
A few things to consider:
- Log in to Google Scholar on your student account. You will most likely get access to complete articles and save lots of time.
Filter results only as far as 8-10 years back. Unless you are talking about the history of a topic, do not use old and outdated articles.
Save citation in proper format. Use the blue quote link below the article of interest and it provides different citation formats (ex. APA, MLA). Copy + Paste in your bibliography.
Save articles as you go. This is a major time saver! When you start reading, you will have all of these saved. I put them in folder on my computer by topic name for later use. Scholar allows you to save these as a PDF when using a school-related email account.
Keep track of search phrases. I usually keep notes of the word combinations I use to search. Different combinations come up with different results, but they start to get mixed up after a while. For example, you may use [higher ed and STEM and historically black colleges], [STEM majors and HBCUs], [higher ed and minority students and STEM].
Use the “Cited By ” and “Related Articles” links to grow your list. The former guides you to articles that have cited the one provided in other places. The latter provides an articles that are related and probably by the same author/s. Cool, huh?
Here are a few snapshots of a bibliography and annotated bibliography I completed as a graduate assistant.
