Library guides

For law students and legal professionals, precision in citation is as important as the legal argument itself. This guide is dedicated to the Australian Guide to Legal Citation 4th edition (AGLC4), the standard style for legal writing in Australia. It provides detailed explanations and clear examples for citing a wide range of legal materials, including cases, legislation, treaties, journal articles and books.

The guide breaks down the complex rules regarding footnotes, pinpoints and bibliographies, ensuring you understand exactly where to place punctuation and how to abbreviate titles. You will also find guidance on how to reference international materials and electronic sources. By strictly adhering to the advice in this guide, you ensure your legal writing meets professional standards and demonstrates the necessary attention to detail.

The APA 7th edition is one of the most widely used referencing styles, particularly in the social sciences, health and education. This guide serves as your comprehensive manual for creating accurate in-text citations and reference lists. It provides clear, easy-to-follow templates and examples for citing a vast range of sources, including journal articles, books, webpages, audiovisual media and lecture notes.

The guide highlights key formatting rules regarding punctuation, italics, capitalisation and the treatment of multiple authors. It also covers the specific formatting requirements for student papers, such as title pages and running heads. By consulting this resource, you can confidently attribute ideas to their original authors, avoid accidental plagiarism and ensure your work adheres to the strict stylistic requirements of the APA format.

This guide focuses exclusively on the Chicago "Author-Date" referencing system, a style commonly utilised in the physical, natural and social sciences. Unlike the notes-based system, the Author-Date format uses parenthetical citations within the text—containing the author’s last name and the year of publication—to acknowledge sources immediately as they are mentioned.

This comprehensive guide provides rules and clear examples for creating these in-text citations for a diverse range of sources, including books, multi-author journal articles, websites and government reports. It also details exactly how to compile the corresponding Reference List at the end of your document, covering essential elements like hanging indents, punctuation conventions and alphabetical ordering. By mastering this specific Chicago convention, you ensure your writing is accurate, consistent and adheres to the professional standards required by your discipline.

Designed specifically for students in History, Arts and the Humanities, this guide covers the Chicago "Notes and Bibliography" system. This style is distinct because it requires the use of superscript numbers in the body of your text, which correspond to detailed footnotes at the bottom of the page or endnotes at the conclusion of the paper.

This guide breaks down the complex mechanics of this system, providing templates for formatting the first citation of a source versus subsequent, shortened citations. It also explains how to handle specific source types like archival documents, newspapers and translated texts. Furthermore, you will learn how to construct a comprehensive Bibliography to accompany your notes, ensuring that every source used in your research is fully documented according to the rigorous traditions of humanities scholarship.

While styles like APA and Chicago are widely used, many specific disciplines require their own specialised citation systems. This guide acts as a directory for these additional styles, including Vancouver, IEEE, ACS and CSE. It provides links to official manuals, quick guides and examples to help you reference correctly in fields such as engineering, chemistry, computer science and medicine.

It is essential to always check your subject guide or assignment instructions to confirm which style is required for your specific task. This resource ensures that even if you are using a less common referencing system, you have access to the rules and examples necessary to maintain academic integrity and meet the professional standards of your field.