Bibliographic Hygiene: Keeping Your References in Ship Shape

The last thing that is on your mind when you are drafting your thesis is probably your references pages. You know your sources, you might even know their authors by name. But when it comes to making that list of documents at the back of your paper, we need to make it with the idea that... someone else may have to find those documents someday!

APA, MLA, and various other disciplines have styles that help us point out the most relevant features of our sources. "Who wrote it?" is most important to the humanities.  "When was it written?" more important in the sciences.  But when we do our bibliographic work we still need to make decisions sometimes, about what to put where, and what information is really needed.

Your references should serve the reader – they should dish up every source in your document in an easily searchable format and contain all the information the reader may need to find the sources. In the 21st century this is probably a more complex process than ever. Even though we can Google up a storm, multi-media sources can be hard to track down. And despite our modern search engine powers, looking for obscure documents, dissertations from other countries, or a journal by the same name as another journal, can lead to bibliographic snarls!

Cases in point: Our office recently had to untangle a source snarl for a client’s references page. And I have dealt with this myself, trying to track down a master’s thesis I needed to read.

A student reached out to us because she had finished her anthropology thesis but was at a loss for how to cite some unpublished letters (to and from Edward Ayer, a major benefactor to the Field Museum and Newberry Library). She had found the papers unsorted in an archive. Literally found them in a box! She was a lucky researcher, because she had been looking for the letters based on a faulty citation. So, it was up to her to fix this paper trail. Carolyn recommended citing the letters under only Ayer’s name, even though he was not the author of all of them. Her reasoning:

Edward Ayer

 “It appeared to me that the correspondence was held in a single archive of Ayer correspondence and that what the reader needs is direction to the archive, not citation to individual pieces. The principle in my editing is to document with the clearest path of recoverability, so that everything on the reference list is accessible in a clear location, whether a book, journal, or website, or in this case an archive of correspondence.”

So, in this case, the other author’s names would not be of any help. The student needed to cite them under the name of the archive they were found in – the only way for another researcher to find them until they are published.

My own problem required a 21st century solution. I just simply couldn’t find the thesis I wanted to read, and it wouldn’t show up in ProQuest or anywhere else, not even at the university where it was written. What was I doing wrong? …The one source I had that referred to the thesis had mis-typed the title. It was a plain enough title, and the author’s name was a common enough name, that I was on a wild goose chase until I decided to chase a different bird – I took to Twitter!

I found the graduate's Twitter account based on his bio, apologized for the bother, and timidly asked in his mentions (so that others might see)… can you send me your thesis? He was happy to oblige. It took a while to dig it up, but getting another citation was worth it I suppose. Now I can cite it as an unpublished thesis, with the correct title, and hope that the next person who wants to read about Northumbrian dialects can easily find the little gem I’d tracked down.

Bibliography is partly about giving credit to the scholars whose research we couldn’t do our own research without. It is also about keeping track of when and where research was done, for that is relevant information in many disciplines. But none of that matters if we don’t give our readers the right bibliographic clues to find those same sources. We’re not just referencing our sources to cover our own butts or to show our research areas. We’re doing it so that research can continue in our fields, even when we’re not around to explain our sometimes cryptic sign-posts. Theses and dissertations are rarely the end-all-be-all on a topic. Let’s leave nicely legible markers along our paths so that others might follow, and even surpass the milestones we’ve made.

Interview with a Freelance Editor

Producing a thesis or dissertation is one thing.  But then after the writing’s done comes the crucial final phase of combining, editing, and proofreading front matter, chapters, tables, references, indexes, and such so that the whole document meets the Graduate School’s formatting requirements—no small chore.  As you head toward (or envision) that final lap, perhaps you’ve considered getting help from an editor.  Here in the Thesis Office we maintain a list of freelance editors who are familiar with NIU’s document formatting rules and offer various editing, formatting, and transcribing services for a fee.  These experts see a lot of research-based writing and can thus share plenty of useful insights on the process of getting your big document in proper shape.   

In this post, we offer some words of reflection, wisdom, and advice from one of the veterans among this group.  She recently visited our office and sat down to share her experiences working with thesis and dissertation writers at NIU.  Our interview covered a range of topics, including her early years of editing (back when clients came to her with printouts and/or files on 3 1/2-inch floppy disks), changes in her work methods over the past decade as documents became almost completely electronic, and the various fields in which her clients have written their papers.  Below is a summary of a few other matters we discussed.     

Red Marks, Red Shoes

It was near the end of the last century when friends and colleagues in DeKalb encouraged Susan Richter, an English literature major, to offer her editing services to thesis and dissertation writers at NIU.  Carolyn Law, our Thesis Office director, told her the work would be “fun.”  Has that prediction turned out to be true?  Overall, Susan’s answers add up to a firm yes.  

“I’m really a bean counter at heart,” she offered at the start of our interview, in reference to the intricacies of arranging and formatting a document in order to avoid a final editor’s red marks.  “Putting everything in the proper order, checking references to make sure they have the volume, issue, and page numbers, making sure everything is following the rules: I enjoy that.”  Though she sometimes finds the content of a thesis or dissertation to be intriguing, Susan insists that what the paper is about is less important to her than the editing of it.  “When people ask me what I do, I tell them, ‘I read but I don’t pay attention.’”  She mentioned that she remembers a few topics from documents she’s edited over the years—teaching methods, management approaches, and engineering solutions come to mind—but doesn’t recall much detail.  She said: “I don’t try to retain any of it because unless it’s something that really interests me, it doesn’t get to stay in my short-term memory.”  In emphasizing her enthusiasm for editing, she also offered a few words worth passing on to writers who may be reaching that final submission stage: “I enjoy making things look the way they’re supposed to look and follow the rules.  If that’s not something you enjoy, you’re going to have problems.  You’re going to have lots of red from Carolyn.” 




Memories about a document’s content may not linger, but anecdotes from her experiences working with grad students readily come to mind.  For example, years ago she would often meet new clients in person.  “It was interesting with the international students,” Susan recalls.  “I would usually meet them over at the student center.  And the first couple of times I said, ‘I’m a white female,’ you know, ‘I’m…’—whatever my age was at the time.  They thought I looked young.  I didn’t look as old as they thought I should.  So I started wearing red shoes.  I would say, ‘I’m 5’3” and have dark hair and will have on red shoes.’”  Thus, students looking for their editor in a crowd would scan below people’s knees, searching for foot coverings matching the color of an editor’s pen.  And does she still have those shoes?  “I do, just in case!”

Words of Experience 

Susan also shared insider views on what writers who seek a freelance editor’s assistance can get right or get wrong.  Highlights worth noting:

• Determine the particular editing or formatting problems you need help with.  Susan likes it when clients are “honest about what they have” up front.
• Give your editor ample lead time before deadlines.  “Most clients contact me ahead of time and seem to be working through the process like responsible adults,” she said.
• Remember that your editor feels deadline pressure, too.  As Susan puts it: “If clients say they’ll send something to me Monday morning and they don’t send it to me until Wednesday night, then a Friday deadline is going to be a little hard to meet.”
• Check your in-text citations and references extra carefully for accuracy and completeness.  Susan reports that they’re never correct.  She says, “People will say, ‘Oh, no, I used a program.  It’ll be fine.’  They will not be fine.  That has never happened.  Twenty years—never.”  Susan will often assist a client by adding missing information in citations and/or references, but she notes that the writer is ultimately responsible for these things.

Sympathy and Advice

Over the years, Susan has also developed a great deal of sympathy for soon-to-be-finished students at this stressful stage in their careers.  “When people would come over to the house to pick up their three copies and their original, or just their original if they needed it, I kept Kleenex by the door.”  Why Kleenex?  “Because they would just burst into tears—men and women—when I would give their finished document to them.  It was done, and it was delivered, and they would be talking and normal and then just start crying.  And so I know it’s a stressful time.  What I hope is that I can relieve some of that stress.”

Near the end of our talk, we asked if she has any words of advice on how to accomplish the thesis or dissertation wisely.  Her answer provides food for thought for writers of all stripes, not just those who may be thinking of sending their document to an editor for hire:  “Focus on the project and the writing.  Nobody can do everything equally well.  The actual formatting, the mechanical part that I work on, has pretty limited value.  Don’t let that end part be a bad memory or a problem.  Make your research worthwhile for somebody to look up and quote.  That’s the whole purpose—to contribute to the body of knowledge.  Do that.  And if editing and formatting has you overly stressed, consider hiring somebody else to make your document look pretty.”  

Video Tutorials Are Here!

You'll find a new page at our Thesis and Dissertation Office website: Video Tutorials!  Robyn and Fred spent the summer designing step-by-step guides to some of the most frequently used Microsoft Word tools for theses. Here, you'll find videos on:

• Page Numbering: Proper pagination (creating page numbers and hiding page numbers) in your document

• Leader Dots: Creating rows of leader dots (......) to build a professional-looking Table of Contents and other tables

• COMING SOON, Landscape Pages: Working with landscape pages to accommodate your tables and figures

Don't get as frustrated as Fred! Watch our videos!

We use on-screen help plus live video of real people (us!) to guide you through every step of these processes. Watch the videos at full speed, slow them down, or watch as many times as you need to in order to learn the processes. Also, we have carefully captioned each one so you can watch without sound. We chose the videos we made based on what we've seen come through the office -- page numbers out of control, margins obliterated by big tables, and Tables of Contents with MS Word weirdness everywhere. When we see these problems, we sometimes have to tell a student the last thing he wants to hear: "We need to start from scratch." With these videos, we're trying to nip bad formatting in the bud. 

Fred's award for his blockbuster,
"Page Numbering"

We try to have a sense of humor to help lighten up what can be a boring and lengthy process. We don't love formatting either, but we'll help you learn to like it just a little better!  As one of our recent graduates said after spending weeks formatting his dissertation, "I should get a degree just for that!"

So before you throw the laptop out the window, avail yourself of these new videos. And if that doesn't work... come see us! We'll be glad to help in person, too. (No autographs, please.)

A Clare Foland Farewell

I'd like to inform you that it's time for a change of hands in the Thesis Office. Mike’s and my assistantships are coming to an end, and two new GA's will introduce themselves to you in a couple weeks.

I know I can speak for Mike in saying that we have thoroughly enjoyed our time here. We worked hard to implement a service-oriented focus in the Office, as we were tasked to do by Carolyn Law, who has envisioned such changes for a long time but never had a staff to help.

The new GA's will undoubtedly come up with new ideas, but I'd like to leave you with a couple lessons I've learned, which may serve as simple reminders.

First, in my consultations with students, I have continually needed to refer to the Thesis or Dissertation Format Guidelines found on our website. Even working here, I sometimes forget certain formatting requirements, so I cannot stress enough to those who are just beginning their thesis or dissertation writing, and even to those who are winding down, to constantly refer to the appropriate guidelines and use the tools we have provided online. The more that you format your document correctly from the start, the easier your final preparation will be, even though you will still likely have some finishing touch changes to make.

Also, I have learned that formatting documents in Word can be frustrating (lol-you knew that). Here, all I can say is try not to let the frustration get to you. I know that's not much help, but I thought it couldn’t hurt to remind that you are not alone in these issues.

My greatest lesson involves advice we repeatedly give: just write. Write down any and all of your thoughts for a chapter or section, no matter how inelegant, unformed, disorganized, or badly phrased—get those ideas on paper. This has been the only way I have made progress, and I am now about half way through my dissertation draft. When I started here, I only had my proposal written. I actually then rewrote/re-framed my proposal to reign in, and restart, my thoughts before diving into a chapter. Next, upon advice from Carolyn Law, I “dared to be adequate”; that is, I literally slapped some drivel onto paper. (And I learned this new word, “drivel”!) Yet, as I worked along on that first chapter, it slowly started to shape up. I am continuing this practice, and it is the only method that works for me.

I have enjoyed meeting students from many disciplines and hearing about your progress, your studies, and your challenges. I feel privileged to have met and worked with a whole bunch of thoughtful people who care deeply about their projects, even knowing what they give up to get these theses and dissertations written. I wish you all the best in completing your work.

So, at the risk of sounding cheesy, I’ll leave you with the following saying: Keep Calm and Write On!

See you on Facebook, at Founders, and at the Write Place, Write Time sessions.

“I Didn’t Know What I Didn’t Know.”

The title of this post is a quote from a student who attended our “Writing a Dissertation in Education” Workshop of October 3rd.

We often hear positive comments after our workshops, either through email or in person. Typically, students report that the workshop they attended was very helpful.

So what is it that we do at our workshops?

Well, let me tell what we did at our fall workshops then alert you to some of the changes we have in store for the spring.

Typical Fall Workshop

This fall, we offered workshops for specific discipline areas and departments. Some focused on thesis preparation, and others focused on dissertation preparation. By “preparation,” we mean the actual construction of a document according to the appropriate Guidelines (←link to “Thesis Format Guidelines”) found on our website. Content issues are a matter for students and their committees, of course.

A common core at our fall workshops was to walk students through the appropriate Guidelines (←link to “Dissertation Format Guidelines”) in great detail, as the instructions do seem daunting at first. Yet these Guidelines are the publication conventions for theses and dissertations written at NIU, and they need to be followed closely.

We explained the rules, such as the correct placement of tables, and illustrated the rules by way of example, after which students better understood what they needed to do and felt more empowered to get it done. Hence, the positive reviews! (Not to boast, but here's another student quote: "Your presentation was fantastic and very much appreciated!")

We also directed students towards important areas on our website and the Graduate School’s website, such as where to find — and how to read — the Graduation Deadlines for Graduate Students.

Finally, we left time for hands-on manipulation of documents where we helped students address specific problems.

Workshop Issues

We found that many of these workshops were too extensive for some students to complete. In some cases, workshops were presented over two or three sessions. We also found that some disciplines require individualized information, while most do not. So in the spring, we are changing things up!

Spring Ahead! 

In 2016, we will split the sessions into A) ones that mainly present and cover necessary material, and B) ones in which students work right then and there on the formatting of their documents.

A) Presentations

Our presentations will be divided into “Thesis Requirements” and “Dissertation Requirements,” and anyone in any discipline can attend either as appropriate to their degree. Each will last approximately 75 minutes and will finish in one sitting. We will still offer a couple discipline-specific sessions, but our general presentations will give all writers a wealth of information in short order.

B) Workshops

Our workshops, which will be held on different dates than the presentations, will address specific formatting issues, such as problems that arise with tables, figures, and pagination. During these workshops, students need to bring their document on a laptop so they can implement format changes. These two-hour long sessions are open to writers of both theses and dissertations. They will be particularly helpful for those nearing their graduation semester. And, the first one is already scheduled!

Schedule of Events

You will find the dates, times, and locations of all of our events through our website (click Workshops and Support) or through NIU’s Events Calendar, where you can also subscribe to our RSS feed “Thesis-Workshops.” We will be listing more soon!

For any questions, you can always call us at (815) 753- 9405 or email us at thesis@niu.edu. 

Finally, one last student quote: "I will be encouraging all of my peers to attend your workshop in the future." We hope you'll take this student's advice, and we'll see you at one of our happenings this spring!