Harvard Reference Generator Tool
The Harvard
Reference Generator tool is designed to create references for your
bibliography in the correct form.
Why have a bibliography?
A Bibliography is a list of the books (or other sources
of information) that you consulted when writing an essay, report, thesis
or dissertation.
When doing research, we very rarely come up with our
own theories. These take time to develop, and involve putting them out for
debate. By researching the theories of others, we include ideas in our
works that have already gone through that academic testing.
However, you have to be aware that you are using
someone else's work for your own benefit. You will get the marks, but the
author of the ideas may have put in decades of research to come up with
the concepts.
Therefore, you need to ensure that you reference your
sources - essentially giving credit to the person whom you are citing.
Why the "Harvard System"?
Books have a standard layout (front cover, copyright
material, list of chapters, the chapters, index, back cover). This is so
that you can walk into any library in the World, and very quickly be able
to access what you were looking for. You could open a book, turn to the
index (arranged alphabetically) and then find the page where the
information is included.
When academics are citing sources, it is important that
the same principle applies. Someone should very quickly be able to
relocate the work you are referring to, either to check it's authority or
legitimacy, or for more information.
Harvard University developed their own formula for how
these should be arranged. This usually involves the year of publication,
the surname and initials of the author, the title of the book (and
chapter, if needed), and the page/s. Some of this text appears in
brackets, some in italics. The result is, someone can quickly locate
exactly what they are looking for with just a glance.
Reference Tool
The Reference
Generator on this site takes in the raw information (author, title,
etc) then creates the correct form for you. You can then highlight and
copy this straight into your Word document (or whichever word processor
you are using).
Please note: this
site, nor the tool, is not associated with Harvard University.
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