Critical Investigation: Task #2

Academic research and bibliography

As you know, a detailed bibliography is crucial to reach the top grades in your coursework. Refer to our Essential Reading List which contains titles of 45 of the most important books for the Critical Investigation, most of which are either in the school library or media suite. If you haven't used any of these yet, make sure you take advantage of these excellent resources this week.

Those underlined are the twenty most important but, obviously, not all of the texts on this list will be directly relevant for you...you'll need to spend a fair amount of time searching through them (especially the contents and indexes) to find the key quotes and ideas that will impress the examiners.

You must include references to quite a few of these books if you want an A or B so borrow them from the library, look at them in lesson or even buy them over the next fortnight. If the book belongs to the Media department, you will have to do your research in class or in DF06 during a free period - the books can't leave school unfortunately.

Task #2 is to pull this information together in an updated blog posting of all your notes and quotes so far INCLUDING a complete bibliography of your research so far. Make sure you include the following:

• Author-Year-Title-Place-Publisher info;
• Quotes (+ Page References) from the book that can be linked to your study;
• A short explanation of each one explaining how it is relevant to you/your topic.
• Finally, post up on your blog a Complete Bibliography (so far) to include ALL the books you currently have quotes from. It MUST contain at least TEN different academic books or journals as well as all your online and Media Magazine sources.

Most people find formatting a bibliography very difficult the first time - there are quite specific rules that you need to follow and universities are very fussy about how it is presented. Use this 'Guide to writing bibliographies' to help or try this really useful bibliography formatting and creation tool: 'BibMe'.

Deadline: Friday 6 December (13D); Monday 9 December (13E)