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Oh Harvard! I too have this problem and to be honest, I think we should come up with an official British Referencing style for the modern age instead of using something which has no official style!

The best guide for Harvard: Colin Neville's (2016) The Complete Guide to Referencing and Avoiding Plagiarism is probably the closest thing to a Harvard Guide. The section Hurrah for Harvard describes the reasons for the inconsistencies with Harvard but also it's strengths, mainly the flexibility. It also provides a lot of examples, the problem being that they don't match our Harvard style. However it is very useful and a great resource, I highly recommend it.

Flexibility of Harvard: In the past Harvard's flexibility was an advantage but in the age of ref management software, this makes it difficult to have one definitive style, meaning there are many different Harvard Style's.

APA: Harvard isn't actually used at Harvard, in the US the APA style is actually the referencing style which has evolved from the same library cataloguing as Harvard Style. As a result, it is very similar and some of our departments have started to use it as it produces a definitive style guide every few years. There are also great resources available at http://blog.apastyle.org/ and https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/.

Referencing and Formatting Guides: One problem with APA, as with Chicago, is that they are complete formatting guides meaning that the style guides they produce cover a lot more than referencing which students at British institutions don't need.

Isn't it time we had a British referencing style?: I think we could actually come up a referencing style which would bring referencing into the 21st century and replace a lot of the outdated info which is of the pre-internet era. This would be better for students and staff, as they could then concentrate on the content rather than getting distracted by the minutiae of formatting. I think a team of librarians, academics and learning technologists could come up with a system...

Regards,

Stephen

On 8 November 2017 at 10:26, Ping-Nan Chang <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi, Kate,

My institute does not subscribe to RefWorks or other paid software. Therefore, I sometimes recommend Zotero to my students. I think students can be informed about some common reference management tools (charged or free) that they may apply to suit their preferences. From logistic points of view, I think that the training should however focus on the software subscribed by individual institution. In addition, when it comes to generating a list of references, Microsoft Word may do the trick (for a limited number of referencing styles though).

Actually, I am more concerned about what the so-called Harvard style is. Is there an official manual of it? Since my own postgraduate studies, I have been confused by the lack of consistency in examples and lack of details in instruction from the research handbook that I received from my university. I also observed the issues on style guideline websites by several British universities. To illustrate, despite its comprehensiveness, UCL IoE Writing Centre’s A-Z guide on Harvard include examples which are not consistent in many ways. For instance, what’s the rules about specifying the country of a publication in the ‘Harvard’ style? I have seen variations in IoE’s examples: no mention of the country, UK and England for something published in England. This issue seems trivial, but could still confuse students. It ended up that I could only advise my students to be consistent. Can anyone recommend a Harvard style guide which is comprehensive and strictly consistent? It seems that I have been opening up another topic for discussion.

Thanks a lot.

Robert

Ping-Nan (Robert) Chang

Academic Skills Coordinator

Department of Graduate Studies

The Institute of Ismaili Studies

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From: learning development in higher education network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Kate Coulson
Sent: 07 November 2017 14:19
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Referencing Query

Good Afternoon Fellow LD-ers!

Here at Northampton I am working with our Academic Librarian’s to simplify our approach to Harvard referencing and I need to pick your lovely brains…..

I have a question for you:

“Do you officially endorse or recommend (as an institution) referencing software such as RefWorks, Mendeley or the like? If so, which one?”

Thanks so much,

Kate

Kathryn Coulson

BSocSc (Hons) MSc PGCTHE MCLIP SFHEA

Head of Learning Development

Library and Learning Services

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