Harvard Referencing

It is vital that you properly Reference all your academic assignments - this adds authority to your work and ensures that you can't be accused of plagiarism.

However, the Harvard Referencing system can take a bit of getting used to.

Here are some resources to help you correctly reference your assignments.

Choose from:
                     - Downloadable Guides
                     - Interactive Online Guide
                     - Plagiarism Checker
                     - Presentations - Harvard in a Hurry
                                           - Harvard Referencing at Newcastle College
                                           - Harvard Referencing with Microsoft Word
                                           - Referencing Revisited
                     - Automatic Reference and Bibliography Generators

If you have any queries or suggestions, please post them on the Comments page of this blog, or get in touch using the contact details at the foot of this page.

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Harvard in a Hurry

A quick video to get you started using Author-Date Citations and Reference Lists / Bibliographies in the right format for the work you hand in at Newcastle College...:


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Downloadable Guides

Flip-book version of our Harvard Referencing guide...:


Access printable versions of our guides to the Harvard Referencing Standard used at Newcastle College here.

This includes our full Referencing and Bibliographies booklet, the Referencing Mini Guide in PDF format, and an annotated example of Harvard Referencing "in action", to try and show how to include the rules in your own work.

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An Interactive Online Guide

Here's a quick link to our Harvard Referencing Microsite - a web resource with worked examples of how to construct Author-Date Citations and Reference List / Bibliography entries for virtually every sources that you might use in your research.

This includes the usual books, journal articles and websites; plus more specialist sources such as Acts of Parliament, British Standards, Photographs, Leaflets and more besides.


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Harvard Referencing at Newcastle College

A condensed version of a presentation delivered on demand to classes at Newcastle College, giving a brief overview of the issue of Plagiarism; details of the Harvard Referencing format used at the College; and at least two dreadful jokes.


This presentation is also available for download as a Powerpoint presentation or in pdf format.


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Referencing Revisited

A Slideshare presentation with some worked examples (and more appalling puns - sorry!) covering some of the more advanced rules and percularities of the Referencing Standard that we use at Newcastle College...:


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Automatic Reference and Bibliography Generators

The most well-known Citation Management Systems, Refworks and EndNote, are hugely expensive and frustratingly difficult to use; but there are other tools available to take the drudgery out of Referencing.


The most easy to use is Neil's Toolbox, an online Reference builder. Type in raw information about your source(author, title, etc), then the system builds a Bibliography / Reference List entry for you. It's basic and only does one source at a time, but serviceable enough.


Cite This For Me works in much the same way, but with this online tool, you can reference more than one source at once, then download the full list into Microsoft Word. Simply choose which type of text you need to reference (book, journal, website, etc), fill in the online form and the website will do the rest - even organising your Reference List / Bibliography into alphabetical order.


Similarly, there is an itunes App available called Easy Harvard Referencing (price : £1.49), which is compatible with Apple iphones and ipads.

Again, all you need to do is fill in the specified details of any source that you used, and the App will convert them into Harvard standard for you








If you are using Microsoft Word 2007 or 2010, there are Citation and Bibliography options that you can access by selecting the "References" tab in the ribbon.

Unfortunately, the Harvard Standard is not one of those supported, however if you select the "APA fifth edition" style, it is reasonably easy to modify this to make your citations abide by the system that you need to use for your work at Newcastle College. Find out how here.




Far more sophisticated is Mendeley. This free downloadable Reference Manager not only automatically extracts all the relevant information to formulate references when you drag-and-drop documents into the program on your desktop; it will also export them into MS Word, let you annotate and organise PDFs, collaborate with others and recommends additional sources to you, based on your subject area. More information and tutorials are available here. Though excellent with online resources and especially e-journals saved as PDFs, I find this package does not work so well with books, and there is an inevitable US bias in the Social Networking features.




I prefer Zotero. Rather than a program, this is a free plug-in for the Firefox web-browser (sadly it does not work with Internet Explorer), which will automatically extract referencing details for online sources and export them to Microsoft Word (and Open Office) in Harvard Standard, but also allows you to import the details for books from the ISBN or simply by finding the title on Amazon. Adding other references manually (eg for print journals) is easy too. Again you can organise all your sources and make notes on them as you see fit, plus the online synch-ing means that you can access your library of resources and references anywhere - you are not tied down to the computer where you downloaded the software. Click here to find out more.



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Harvard Referencing with Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word 2007 and 2010 both include tools to help you with Referencing - though annoyingly they don't include the Harvard style.

This Prezi shows you how to access and use these tools, and how to modify the results so they are in the correct format that you need to use at Newcastle College...:


You can work through the Prezi by clicking the arrow, by chosing the Autoplay option from the More menu at the bottom right, or by exploring/dragging around the presentation canvas yourself with your mouse like you would on Google Maps.

Alternatively, a downloadable print version of this guide is available here.



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Plagiarism Checker

Many Colleges and Universities upload assignments to Turnitin to check them for Plagiarism - the deliberate or unintentional submitting of someone else's work as your own - but that option is not always available to students.

Here is a free online alternative to check whether your work might be suspected of plagiarism, either because you have got your Referencing wrong, or because you have used too much material from other sources without including enough of your own analysis.

PLEASE NOTE

  • This system is NOT as accurate as Turnitin (which itself is just a guide for staff) and by no means proves that your work is completely original.
This caveat aside, Paper Rater does usefully help you self-evaluate your work, and can help you correct any errors and correctly use citations, before you submit it for formal assessment.