Scenario 2

Step two: Prepare notes and a bibliography

The second step is to take notes from sources of information from which you draw the material for your book report. You will list your sources in parenthetical notes or footnotes and in the bibliography.

Notes include names, dates, incidents, ideas, quotations taken either from the book your are writing a report about or from other books, meaningful passages as well as notation of the page numbers referring to these items. Taking notes requires recording the sources. Prepare a card for each source you will use. Look at the following note card on Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace.⁴

If you are working with a computer, prepare a directory and files to include all the information needed for the bibliography. Add a brief comment that will remind you of the content. Citations of online documents may be done according to the Bibliographic Style Manual for electronic documents. The third example below shows a specific entry found at the National Library of Canada.

Here are examples of a footnote, of a bibliography entry and of an electronic document for a book by one author: