How to format your references using the The Library citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The Library. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Find the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

Power, Scott B., ‘Climate Science: Expulsion from History’, Nature, 511.7507 (2014), pp. 38–39

A journal article with 2 authors

Megens, Mischa, and Joanna Aizenberg, ‘Capillary Attraction: Like-Charged Particles at Liquid Interfaces’, Nature, 424.6952 (2003), pp. 1014; discussion 1014

A journal article with 3 authors

Cysouw, Michael, Dan Dediu, and Steven Moran, ‘Comment on “Phonemic Diversity Supports a Serial Founder Effect Model of Language Expansion from Africa”’, Science (New York, N.Y.), 335.6069 (2012), pp. 657; author reply 657

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Coop, Graham, Xiaoquan Wen, Carole Ober, Jonathan K. Pritchard, and Molly Przeworski, ‘High-Resolution Mapping of Crossovers Reveals Extensive Variation in Fine-Scale Recombination Patterns among Humans’, Science (New York, N.Y.), 319.5868 (2008), pp. 1395–98

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

Garrison, D. Randy, and Norman D. Vaughan, Blended Learning in Higher Education (Jossey-Bass, 2007)

An edited book

Fleiner, Carey, and Elena Woodacre, eds., Virtuous or Villainess? The Image of the Royal Mother from the Early Medieval to the Early Modern Era, Queenship and Power (Palgrave Macmillan US, 2016)

A chapter in an edited book

Thumati, Balaje T., and Jagannathan Sarangapani, ‘Estimation and Control of Nonlinear Discrete-Time Systems’, in Recent Advances in Intelligent Control Systems, ed. by Wen Yu (Springer, 2009), pp. 89–124

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for The Library.

Blog post

Fang, Janet, ‘Is Yellowstone About To Erupt?’, IFLScience (IFLScience, 2014)

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

Government Accountability Office, Improvements Can Be Made in the Fiscal Management of CETA (U.S. Government Printing Office, 8 April 1982)

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Mehta, Varad, ‘Sparta in the Enlightenment’ (unpublished Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University, 2009)

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

Poniewozik, James, ‘Heart of the Matter’, New York Times, 3 May 2017, p. C7

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text

About the journal

Full journal title	The Library
Abbreviation	Library (Lond.)
ISSN (print)	0024-2160
ISSN (online)	1744-8581
Scope	Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) Library and Information Sciences