I NEED HELP.... anybody good with college papers???

[kdibattista]

I have a paper due for my nursing class. This is the first "college" paper I have done and the last paper I had to do was 8 years ago in high school. Please forgive me if these are stupid questions:

1. What is the difference between a reference and a bibliography? ( I am suppose to identify the article using correct bibliographic format )
2. If I am using an article as the topic of my paper, do I just use the article as my reference or do I need to reference all of the article's references as well?

P.S. This has to be done according to APA style format

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU in advance for any help!!!!!

 

[jamsmom]

I haven't a clue, but sure hope someone here on the DIS can help!

 

[Val]

This is a little complicated. A bibliography generally refers to all the books/articles you used during the prep of your paper. References refer to what you used/info you obtained for the paper. For instance, if you read a paper by Smith and Jones written in 1990, and you wanted to report the findings of your paper, you would write "according to Smith and Jones (1990), their investigation of people addicted to the Dis found that the average individual spent 9.6 hours per night on the community board"......alternatively, you could report it as "results of a survey on community board usage of the DIS showed the average individual spent 9.6 hours each night reading and responding on the community board (Smith & Jones, 1990)." You would then include Smith and Jones in the reference list.....


for a much more eloquent discussion of APA style, see:

http://webster.commnet.edu/apa/apa_index.htm

Hope that this helps rather than confuses. Its been a LONG time since I taught experimental methods!!!!!

 

[Talking Hands]

a reference is a specific idea from a book and is listed in the footnotes specifically by title, author and page number

a bibliography is a list of all the books you used in your rresearch on the subject Title, author, publisher, copyright date etc.

 

[Kallison]

If you copy anything directly from the paper it should be referenced, otherwise it will be considered plagiarism.

I always had a hard time with this because basically everything you write should be referenced, unless you come up with an original idea.

 

[Tiggeroo]

There is a web-site that creates a whole bibliography page for you. You just enter the info. Did your prof specify which method he wants you to use. I think I remember that one method of documenting, MLA i think, is preferred for scientific type papers. Do you know if your professor wants internal (you make notes after every reference in the paper) or just a bibliography page? Good luck, having been a non-traditional student and soon to be a much more non trad. student I understand.

 

[Fantasia Girl]

Here is a link to my college's library, they have a great research help page. http://libraryweb.umd.umich.edu/lib/handouts/index.html

I hope this helps!

 

[kdibattista]

Thank you so much for all of your help!!!!! The websites were extremely helpful!!!