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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Di Santo, James P., ‘Immunology. A Guardian of T Cell Fate’, Science (New York, N.Y.), 329.5987 (2010), pp. 44–45

A journal article with 2 authors

Thurner, Stefan, and Sebastian Poledna, ‘DebtRank-Transparency: Controlling Systemic Risk in Financial Networks’, Scientific Reports, 3 (2013), p. 1888

A journal article with 3 authors

Li, Chen, Tingnan Zhang, and Daniel I. Goldman, ‘A Terradynamics of Legged Locomotion on Granular Media’, Science (New York, N.Y.), 339.6126 (2013), pp. 1408–12

A journal article with 7 or more authors

de Boer, W. D. A. M., and others, ‘Optical Excitation and External Photoluminescence Quantum Efficiency of Eu³⁺ in GaN’, Scientific Reports, 4 (2014), p. 5235

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Storey, Ian C., and Arlene Allan, A Guide to Ancient Greek Drama (Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2008)

An edited book

Stack, M. Sharon, and David A. Fishman, eds., Ovarian Cancer: Second Edition, Cancer Treatment and Research, 2nd edn (Springer US, 2010), cxlix

A chapter in an edited book

Kemp, Tom S., ‘Non-Mammalian Synapsids: The Beginning of the Mammal Line’, in Evolution of the Vertebrate Ear: Evidence from the Fossil Record, ed. by Jennifer A. Clack, Richard R. Fay, and Arthur N. Popper, Springer Handbook of Auditory Research (Springer International Publishing, 2016), pp. 107–37

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, ‘Why Smaller Mammals Are More Susceptible To Cancer’, IFLScience (IFLScience, 19 July 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, Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle: DOD Needs to Ensure New Acquisition Strategy Is Based on Sufficient Information (U.S. Government Printing Office, 15 September 2011)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Reser, Gary, ‘Assessing the Relationship between Adult Attachment and Differentiation of Self to Coparental Divorce Adjustment’ (unpublished Doctoral dissertation, Northcentral University, 2012)

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

Crow, Kelly, ‘Taken to the Cleaners Again’, New York Times, 14 January 2001, p. 146

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