Adding a Bibliography and Supplementary Material

Adding a Bibliography and Supplementary Material

Oct 01, 2024Rene Tetzner

Adding a Bibliography and Supplementary Material

Although a bibliography may not be strictly necessary when full references are provided in footnotes or endnotes, a list of complete bibliographical references is normally required in a PhD thesis, regardless of the documentation system used. This list is usually entitled ‘Bibliography’ when it accompanies in-note references, as it is in the Chicago-style Notes and Bibliography method. Complete references in the bibliography include the full page ranges for chapters and articles, and differ slightly from the references in the notes in other ways as well, so the complete in-note reference I used as an example in Part III of this series on footnotes and endnotes would take this form in a Chicago-style bibliography (again, with italics on the titles of the book and the Tales):

Hardman, Phillipa. “Presenting the Text: Pictorial Tradition in Fifteenth-Century Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales.” In Chaucer Illustrated: Five Hundred Years of the Canterbury Tales in Pictures, edited by William K. Finley and Joseph Rosenblum, 37–72. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2003.

References should be arranged alphabetically in the bibliography according to the surnames of authors, though bibliographies can be subdivided (into ‘Primary Sources’ and ‘Secondary Sources,’ for example) with an alphabetical arrangement used within each section.

When you are using an in-note style of documentation, the primary function of footnotes or endnotes is to provide bibliographical information on sources, but additional material of all kinds can also be included in the notes, making them a useful site for introducing, comparing and contrasting a wide variety of supplementary information. Commentary can be seamlessly blended with references to compare and contrast theories, evidence and results, speculate on ideas and interpretations presented in the main text and create a kind of secondary level of discussion that can enhance without confusing the central line of your argument. A footnote of this kind might read (with the shortened book titles in italic font):

1 The quotation is from McSparran and Robinson, CUL MS Ff.2.38, xvii. Eddy, Marginal Annotation (forthcoming), suggests that London, Lambeth Palace MS 491 (another romance MS: see Guddat-Figge, MSS Containing Middle English Romances, 226–228) may also ‘have been used primarily by juvenile readers’ (personal communication July 2010).

The kind of supplementary material included in footnotes or endnotes varies markedly from thesis to thesis, but, generally speaking, information that is closely related to the discussion in the main text of your thesis, but that might be excessively long or distracting if presented there should be placed in the notes.

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