Getting students to write bibliographies has always been a challenge and getting them to write one properly is even more so. Recently, academics have moved to using programs to generate their bibliographies and there is no reason why students shouldn’t take advantage of these time and trouble saving applications.

Fortunately, the State Library Association of South Australia has created a fantastic, user-friendly bibliography generator for students. You can have a look at it here.

The benefit of this one is that it provides a staged exposure to referencing by slowly introducing more options and detail over different age groups. Junior school students choose between 6 icons for categorising their material while senior students can choose from a list of more than sixty types of resources ranging from Film or DVD to Discussion group, listserv.

The site uses the Harvard Author-Date System and, once references are created they can easily be copied and pasted into a bibliography.

Using the site:

1. Go to http://www.slasa.asn.au/org/.

2. Choose your level (Grade 3-5 = Junior School, 6-9 = Middle School, 10-12 Senior School).

3. Select your material type from the list.

4. Complete the fields and press the enthusiastic ‘Create citation!’ button.

5. Copy the reference that it creates and paste it into your bibliography.

Let me know what you think!