Bibliographie

Bibliographie is a term of French origin that refers to a systematic list of sources on a given topic or the sources consulted in the preparation of a work. In English scholarly usage, the term is often equated with bibliography. A bibliography serves as a map of the literature relevant to a subject and provides readers with enough information to locate each source. It can be descriptive, listing items with bibliographic details, or annotated, adding a brief summary or evaluation of each entry.

There are several distinctions within bibliographies. A works cited or references list includes only sources directly cited in the text, while a bibliography may be broader, including additional reading. Annotated bibliographies add notes that summarize or assess the relevance, reliability, or scope of each source. Some bibliographies focus on the physical aspects of books (descriptive bibliography) or on the history of editions and textual variants (analytical bibliography).

Contents and formatting typically include author, title, edition, publisher, place of publication, and year for books; journal name, volume, issue, and pages for articles. Online sources usually require a URL or DOI and the date of access. Citations follow style guides such as APA, MLA, or Chicago, or discipline-specific systems.

Historically, bibliographies emerged from classical scholarship and evolved with printing, cataloging, and library science. In modern practice, bibliographies increasingly include digital resources and linked data, and they appear in monographs, articles, and online databases. They remain essential tools for locating sources, assessing the scope of a topic, and tracing scholarly conversations.