It’s the start of session, most of you are probably getting ready to
start your first assignment and experience the joys of referencing!.
Referencing is the acknowledgement of information sources in your work;
it is the appropriate way to give credit to the original owner of an
idea, piece of writing or creative work. All assignments at CSU are
expected to be fully referenced unless advised otherwise, and as most
schools within CSU use the American Psychological Association (APA)
referencing style – commonly known as APA 6th, the Library has put
together a few tips to help you get started with APA!
The Academic Referencing Tool
(ART) provides detailed referencing examples for the referencing style –
APA 6. The tool includes examples of in-text referencing, direct
quotations, paraphrasing and footnoting. Bibliography/ Reference List
and detailed style notes are also available. Another great tool is the CSU APA Referencing Summary, a guide to referencing based on the Publication Manual of the American
Psychological Association (6th ed.). This summary gives examples of the
APA referencing style for a number of commonly used information sources.
The ALLaN (Academic Literacy, Learning and Numeracy) Team have made some wonderful resources and recordings on referencing. Why not register for the Kickstart to Referencing workshop or Advancing your Referencing workshop. Need help, now, you can listen to the video recordings of these workshops that are between 30-50 minutes long.
If you’re just starting at CSU you may not have heard of the EndNote
Software for referencing. More than just a reference manager, EndNote
moves you through the research process as you search, organise, write,
publish and share. EndNote can be downloaded for free from the Library
website, and you can explore using EndNote by checking out the Library’s
EndNote resource guide. The Library is also running free Online Library Workshops on EndNote for PC and Mac, so if you’d like to learn more about using EndNote, register now for one of our workshops.
A fantastic new resource that is available to students through the Library website, is the APA Style CENTRAL database.
APA Style Central is the American Psychological Association’s official
online resource for teaching, writing, and publishing in APA style. The
database is an invaluable resource for staff and students, and consists
of 4 main sections:
- Learn: Covers scholarly writing and includes short video
guides; longer video tutorials; quizzes; and sample papers, references,
tables, and figures. - Research: Includes tutorials, dictionaries, and reference books on research, and includes a tool to search for and manage references.
- Write: A writing centre which contains templates to assist with preparing a paper, and has step-by-step instructions on APA Style.
- Publish: Tips and tutorials on the publishing process, and links to journals as potential publication outlets.
You’ll find links to APA Style Central through the CSU Library’s Journal Databases page (under the letter A), and on the Referencing at CSU
page of the Student Portal. For more information about APA Style
Central, or assistance using ART, the APA referencing Summary and
EndNote, contact us at the Library.
To avoid getting frustrated, there are additional help available from the Ask ALLaN forum (under Study Skills tab in Interact 2), where you may find your question as already been asked and answered or you can add one in. The ALLaN Team, who are the referencing experts at CSU, provides free support, online and on campus for all CSU students, so why not book an appointment now?